The Boat of a Million Years Poul Anderson

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She obeyed. Sometimes she and Barikai had enjoyed playing master and slave. Or youth and whore.

She felt Zabdas raise himself to an elbow. His free hand tugged at her gown. She pulled it up and spread her thighs. He climbed between. He rested his full weight on her, which Barikai had not, but then Zabdas was much lighter. She reached to guide him. Briskly, he took care of that himself, grasped her breasts through the cloth, and thrust. He did 70

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not seem to notice how her arms and legs clasped him. It was quickly over.

He got off and lay until his breathing was again even. She could barely see him as a deeper shadow in the night. He sounded troubled: "How wet you were. You have the body of a young woman, as well as the face.'*

"For you," she murmured.

Through the mattress she felt him tauten. "What is your age in truth?" So Hairan had avoided saying it outright; but Zabdas had perhaps avoided asking.

Fourscore and one, she knew. "I have never kept count," was the safest reply. "But there has been no deception, my lord. I am Hairan's mother. I ... was quite young when I bore him, and you have seen that I carry my years better than most."

"A wonder." His voice was fiat.

"Uncommon. A blessing. I am unworthy, but—" It must out: "My courses have not yet ended. I can bear you children, Zabdas."

"This is-—" He searched for a word. "Unexpected."

"Let us thank God together."

"Yes. We should. But now best we sleep. I have much to do in the morning."

To ZABDAS came the caravan master Nebozabad. They must discuss a proposed shipment to Dannesek. A journey of that length could no longer be lightly undertaken. News was too ominous, of the Arabian onslaught against Persia and threat to New Rome.

The merchant received his guest well, as he did all who were of consequence, and bade him dine.

Aliyat insisted on serving them with her own hands. As they sat over their dessert, Zabdas excused himself and was gone for a while. He suffered from an occasional flux of the bowels. Nebozabad waited alone.

The room was the best furnished in the house, with embroidered red hangings, four seven-branched candelabra of gilt bronze, a table of teakwood carven in foliate patterns and inlaid with nacre, the ware upon it of silver or the finest

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glass. A pinch of incense hi a brazier made the air, on this warm eventide, a little cloying.

Nebozabad looked up when Aliyat came in with a tray of fruits. She stopped across from him, in dark garments that muffled sight of more than hands, countenance, the big hazel eyes. "Sit down, my lady," he urged.

She shook her head. "That would be unseemly," she answered in a near whisper.

"Then I will stand." He rose from his stool. "Far too long has it been since last I saw you. How fares it?"

"Well enough." She took on expression; her words leaped. "And how is it with you? Aiid Hairan and, oh, everybody? I hear very little."

"You do not see much of anyone, da you, my lady?"

"My husband feels it would be ... indiscreet ... at my age. But how goes it, Nebozabad? Tell me, I beg you!"

He repeated her phrase: "Well enough. Another grandchild bom to him, a girl, have you heard? As for myself, I have two living sons and a daughter, by the grace of God. Business—" He shrugged.

"This is what I've come about."

"Is the danger from the Arabs great?"

"I fear so." He paused, tugged his beard. "In your days with master Barikai, may he be happy in Heaven, you knew everything that went on. You took a hand in it yourself."

She bit her lip. "Zabdas feels differently."

"I suppose he wishes to keep rumors down, and that is why he never has Hairan, or any kinsman of yours, here— Forgive me!" He had seen what crossed her features. "I should not pry. It's only that, that you were my master's lady when I was a boy, and ever gracious to me, and—" His voice trailed off.

"You are good to be concerned." She jerked her head as if to keep it from drooping. "But I have fewer sorrows than many do."

"I heard your child died. I'm sorry."

She sighed. "That was last year. Wounds heal. We will try again."

"You have not already?— No, again I spoke badly. Too much wine. Forgive me. Seeing how beautiful you still are, I thought—"

She flushed. "My husband is not too old."

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"Yet he— No. Aliyat, my lady, if ever you should need help—"

Zabdas returned and she, having set down her tray, said good night and departed.

WHILE ROMAN and Persian bled each other to exhaustion, afar in Makkah Muhammad ibn Abdallah saw visions, preached, must flee to Yathrib, prevailed over his enemies, gave his refuge the new name Medinat Rasul Allah, the City of the Apostle of God, and died as master of Arabia. His Khalifa, Successor, Abu Bekr suppressed rebellion and launched in earnest those holy wars that united the people and carried the faith out across the world.

Six years after the troops of Emperor Heraklios reclaimed Tadmor, the troops of Khalifa 'Omar took it. The year after that they were in Jerusalem, and the year after that the Khalifa visited the holy city, passing triumphant through a completely subjugated Syria while couriers brought accounts of Islamic banners carried deep into the Persian heartland.

On the day he spent in Tadmor, from her rooftop Aliyat witnessed magnificence, gallant horses, richly caparisoned camels, riders whose helmets and mailcoats, lances and shields turned sunlight into flame, cloaks like windblown rainbows, trumpet and drum and deep-voiced chant. The streets surged, the oasis boiled with the conquerors. Yet she noticed that the far greater number of them were lean and roughly clad. Likewise was their garrison here, and their officials lived simple lives, five times daily humbling themselves before God when the muezzin's call wailed across the sky.

Nor were they bad rulers. They levied tribute, but it was not unbearable. They turned a few churches into mosques, but otherwise left Christians and Jews in the peace that they sternly enforced. The qadi, then- chief justice, held court beneath the arch at the east end of the Colonnade, near the agora, and even the lowliest could appeal directly to him. Then- irruption had been too swift to damage trade much, and it soon began reviving.

Aliyat was not altogether surprised when Zabdas said to her, in the tone that meant he would banish her to a rear

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room if she gave him any dispute: "I have reached a great decision. This household shall embrace Islam."

Nonetheless she stood a while quiescent, amidst the shadows with which the single frugal lamp filled their bedchamber. When she spoke it was slowly, and her eyes searched him. "This is indeed a matter of the first importance. Have they compelled you?"

He shook his head. "No, no. They do not—except pagans, I am told." He formed his thin brief smile.

"They would rather most of us remain Christian, so we may own land, which believers may not, and pay tribute for it as well as the other taxes. My talks with the imam whom I approached have been difficult. But of course he may not refuse a sincere convert."

"You'll gain many advantages."

He reddened. "Do you call me a hypocrite?"

"No, no, certainly not, my lord."

Zabdas turned mild. "I understand. To you this is a terrible shock, you who have been raised to worship Christ. Think, though. The Prophet never denied that Jesus was also a prophet. He was simply not the last one, the one to whom God revealed the full truth. Islam sweeps away the superstition about countless saints, the priests who come between a man and his God, the witless commandments and restrictions. We have but to acknowledge that there is one God and Muhammad is His Prophet. We have but to live righteous lives." He lifted a forefinger. "Think. Could the Arabs have borne everything before them as they have done, as they are doing and shall do, were theirs not the cause that is blessed, the faith that is true? I am bringing us to the truth, Aliyat." He squinted, peering. "You welcome the truth, do you not? It cannot harm you, can it?"

Recklessly, she cast across the space between them: "I hear a man who becomes a Muslim must suffer what Jewish boys do."

"It will not disable me," he snapped. Curbing temper again: "I do not expect a woman to understand these deep things.. Only trust in me."

She swallowed, willed ease upon herself, moved toward him. "I do, my lord, I do," she murmured.

Maybe she could cause him to beget a third child on her, and maybe that one would survive to give meaning back to her life. He seldom

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took her to him, mostly when she made herself coax him in that same hope. It was almost as if, more and more, he feared her.

As for the change of religion, that mattered less than he supposed. What had the saints done to help, throughout the endless years?

SHE HAD not foreknown what the change meant. Islam burst upon Syria too suddenly. Zabdas studied it before he made his move. Only when the thing was done did she learn.

The Prophet had laid upon women of the faith the ancient usages of Arabia. In public they must wear the yashmak, the heavy veil hiding everything but the eyes, and likewise at home in the presence of any man but father, brother, husband, or son. Unchastity was punished by death.

Quarters for men and women were separate, like an invisible wall built through the house, to whose door its master had the single key. Submission of wife to husband was not bounded by law and custom as it was among Christians and Jews; while a marriage lasted it was total, his the right to mutilate or kill the disobedient. Aside from such tasks as marketing, she had nothing to do with the outside world; he, his children by her, and his dwelling were to be her universe. For her there was no church, and whatever Paradise she might hope for would not be his.

So Zabdas explained, piecemeal as occasion arose. Aliyat was not sure the Law was quite that one-sided. She was entirely sure that in most families, practice softened it. But be that as it may, she was a prisoner.

She was even denied the solace of wine. That might be just as well, she decided once the first rage had faded. She had been resorting to it much oftener than was wise.

Oddly, however, as the Muslim months passed, she found herself less alone than hitherto. Thrust together, the females of the household—not only she and the slaves,, but the wives and girl-children of two of Zabdas* sons who had joined him in Tadmor—at first quarreled viciously, then began to confide in each other. Her position and her freedom from aging had set her apart. Those who now saw her shar-THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

ing then- helplessness discovered they could overlook these things, and if they told her their troubles she would do what tittle she could to aid them.

For her part, she learned bit by bit that she was not utterly isolated. In some ways, she touched more of the city than she had done since Barikai's death. She might be confined, but lesser females must needs go out on various errands; and they had kinfolk with whom they gossiped at every opportunity; and nobody cared to be strict with the humble, nor stopped to think that they too possessed sharp ears, open eyes, and inquiring minds. As the touch of a fly quivers through the web to the spider that sits at its middle, so did flickers of information reach Aliyat.

She was not present when Zabdas sought the qadi soon after his conversion; but in view of what was overheard and passed on, and what happened later, eventually she believed she could reconstruct it almost as well as if she had been invisibly listening.

Normally the qadi heard pleas in the open. Everybody was free to come. She could have done so, had she had any real plaint. She thought of it, and concluded drearily that she did not. Zabdas was never abusive. He provided adequately. If he no longer came to her bed, what should a woman close to her ninetieth year expect—whether or not she had again borne him a child, and this one did keep on living? The very thought was obscene.

He asked for a private audience and the qadi granted it. The two sat in the house of Mitknal ibn Dirdar and sipped chilled pomegranate juice while they talked. Neither paid heed to the eunuch who waited on them; but he had acquaintances outside, who in their turn knew people.

"Yes, of course you may divorce your wife," Mitkhal said. "It is easily done. However, under the Law she retains all property that was hers, and I gather she brought a fair amount to this marriage. In every event, you must see to it that she does not become destitute or lack for protection." He bridged his fingers. "Moreover, do you wish to offend her kinfolk?"

"Hairan's goodwill is worth little these days," Zabdas clipped. "His business fares poorly.

Aliyat's other children—by her first marriage—scarcely know her any more.

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But, hm, the requirements you describe, those could prove awkward."

Mitkhal regarded him closely. "Why do you wish to put this woman from you? In what is she at fault?"

"Proud, resentful, sullen— No," said Zabdas beneath that gaze, "I cannot in honesty call her contumacious."

"Has she not given you a child?"

"A girl. The two before, they soon died. The girl is small and sickly."

"That is shabby ground for blame, my friend. Old seed gives thin fruit."

Zabdas chose to misunderstand. "Old, yes, by ... by the Prophet! I have inquired. I should have done so at the first, but— Sir, she nears the hundred-year mark."

The qadi's lips formed a soundless whistle. "And yet— one hears rumors—is she not yet fair? And you tell me she remains healthy and fertile."

Zabdas leaned forward. Sunlight fell through the grille over a window to dapple his balding head.

Behind sparse whiskers, the wattles under his jaw wabbled as he cried in a high-pitched, cracking voice: "It's unnatural! Lately she lost a tooth or two and I believed at last, at last— But new ones are growing out, as if she were a child of six or seven! She must be a witch, or an ifrit, a demon, a— That's what I beg for. That's what I ask for, an investigation, a—an assurance I can cast her out and—not have to fear her vengeance. Help me!"

Mitkhal raised a palm. "Hold, hold." His words flowed soft. "Be calm. Truly we have a marvel here.

Yet all things are possible to God the Omnipotent. She has not been impious or sinful in any way, has she? You may have done right to keep her as secluded as you could—since you, her husband, have had this terror brewing within you. If the tale went abroad and spread panic, she might have been set on in the streets. Beware of that." Severely: "Ancient patriarchs lived close to a thousand years on earth. If God the Compassionate sees fit to let—Aliyat, is that her name?— linger for close to a hundred, ageless, who are we to question His will or divine His purpose?"

Zabdas stared at his lap. What teeth remained to him gritted together. "Nevertheless," he mumbled.

"My counsel is that you keep her as long as she does no THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

evil, for this is both justice for her and prudence for you. My decree, upholding the Law, is that you offer her no harm when she has offered none, nor make accusations that are baseless." Mitkhal reached for his cup, sipped, smiled. "But, true, if coupling with a crone strikes you as indecent, that is a matter of your choice. Have you considered taking a second wife? You are allowed four, you know, besides concubines."

In these latter years of his, Zabdas was quick to cool down from both his angers and his fears. He sat a moment silent, looking into a corner of the room. Then his mouth tilted upward and he murmured, "I thank my lord for his wise and merciful judgment."

THE DAY came when he summoned Aliyat to his office.

It was a chamber bare and cramped. A window opened on the inner court, but was too high up to afford sight of water or flowers. A niche gaped white where once the image of a saint stood. At the far end, a dais held a table bestrewn with letters, records, and writing materials. Behind it, he sat on a bench.

She entered. He laid aside a papyrus sheet, which crackled, and pointed downward. She went to knees and toes on the bare tiles before him. Silence stretched.

"Well?" he snapped.

She kept her eyes lowered. "What is my lord's desire?"

"What have you to say for yourself?"

"What must your handmaiden defend?"

"Mock me not!" he shouted. "I've had my fill of your insolence. Now you have struck my wife in the face. It is too much."

Aliyat looked up, caught his glance, held fast. "I thought Furja would go whimpering to you," she said steadily. "What tale did she bear? Fetch her and let me hear."

His fist struck the desk. "I will settle this. I am the master. I am being kind. I am giving you your chance to explain why you should escape a whipping."

She drew breath. This had been foreseeable since the thing happened; she had had a pair of hours wherein to marshal words. "My lord must know that his new bride and 78

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I are apt to quarrel." Stupid, weak-chinned, spiteful creature, forever seeking to squirm herself into the man's favor and shrill herself into sovereignty over the harem. "Alas that this should be. It is wrong." That tasted foul but had better be said. "Today she gave me an intolerable insult. I smote her once, open-handedly, across the chops. She wailed and fled—to you, who have things of importance to deal with."

"She has often complained to me. You have been overbearing ever since she came into my house."

"I have demanded no more than the respect due your senior wife, my lord." I will not become a slave, a dog, a thing.

"What was this insult?" asked Zabdas.

"It was vile. Must I take it in my mouth?"

"Um-m . . . describe it."

"She shrieked that I keep my looks and strength by— means unspeakable in decent company."

"Um! Are you certain? Women have flighty memories."

"I suppose if you haled her in and put the question, she would deny it. Not her first lie."

"Word against word." Zabdas sighed loudly. "What is a man to believe? When shall he find peace to get on with his work? Women!"

"I think men, too, would grow jangle-witted, were they shut away forever with nothing to do that was worth the doing," said Aliyat, for she felt she had little'to lose.

"If I have left you . . - undisturbed, it has been out of consideration for your age."

"And yours, my lord?" she dared purr.

He paled. The brown spots on his skin stood plain to see. "Furja does not find me wanting!"

Not quite every night of the month, Aliyat thought. And, in sudden, surprising pity: He fears that his uneasiness about me would unman him; and likely that very fear would.

But they were moving toward deadly ground. She drew back: "I pray my lord's pardon. No doubt some of the blame does fall on me, his servant. I simply hoped to explain to him why squabbles trouble his harem. If Furja will show me courtesy, I will do likewise."

Zabdas rubbed his chin and stared beyond her. She had a

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brief, eerie feeling that somehow this was a chance for which he had waited. At length he regarded her and said, his tone strained, "Life was different for you in your young days. Old people find it hard to change. At the same time, this vigor you have kept makes it impossible for you to resign yourself. Am I right?"

She swallowed. "My lord speaks truth," she answered, amazed that he showed any insight.

"And I have heard that you were helpful to your first husband in his business," he went on.

She could only nod.

"Well, I have given you much thought, Aliyat," he said faster. "My duty under God is to provide for your welfare, which should include your spirit's. If time has become empty for you, if our daughter is not enough—well, perhaps we can find something more."

Her heart sprang. Blood thundered in her ears.

Again he looked past her. "What I have hi mind is irregular," he said, cautiously now. "No violation of the Law, understand, but it could cause gossip. I am willing to hazard this for your sake, but you must do your part, you must exercise the utmost discretion."

"Wha-whatever my lord commands!"

"It will be a beginning, a trial. If you acquit yourself well, who knows what may follow? But hark.'* He wagged his forefinger. "In Emesa is a youth, a distant kinsman of mine, who is eager to go into the business. His father will be pleased if I invite him here and train him. I, though, I lack time to teach him the ins and outs, the rules and customs and traditions peculiar to Tadmor, as well as the basic practicalities—especially where it comes to making shipments, to dealing with caravaneers. I could assign a man of mine to his instruction, but I can ill spare anyone. You, however; I suppose you remember. Of course, the utmost discretion is essential."

Aliyat prostrated herself. "Trust me, my lord!" she sobbed.

BONNUR WAS tall, broad in the shoulders, slim in the waist. His beard was the merest overlay of silk across the smooth features, but a man's strength rested in the hands. His movements and his eyes were like a gazelle's. Though he

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was Christian, Zabdas received him cordially before sending him to find a bed among the other young men who served &nd learned here.

A twelvemonth back, the merchant had bought a lesser building adjacent to his home. He set workers to erect walls and roof joining the pair together, then knock out what separated them and make them one. Thus he would gain added offices, storerooms, and quarters for an expanded staff; his trade was burgeoning. Lately he had ordered a halt to the construction. He declared it was better to wait and see what effect the ongoing conquest of Persia would have on the traffic with India.

The addition therefore stood unfurnished, unoccupied, dusty, and silent.

When he led her into it, Aliyat was astonished to find a room at the far end had been swept and outfitted. A plain but thick wool carpet softened the floor. Hangings flanked the second-story window. A table held a water carafe, cups, papyrus, ink, pens. Two stools waited nearby. And Bonnur did. Though Aliyat had been introduced to him earlier, her pulse quickened.

He salaamed deeply. "Be at ease," said Zabdas with unaccustomed cordiality, "at ease, my dears. If we are to be a little irregular, we may as well enjoy it."

He took a turn arourid the room, talking: "For my wife to explain things to you, Bonnur, and for you to ask of her, you need freedom. I am not the dry stick people take me for. I know that the folkways, the subtleties of a city cannot be entered in a ledger or parsed like a sentence. Stares and sniggers and the constraint you would feel, did you sit conferring in plain sight of every fool, those would bind your tongues, your minds. The task would become difficult, prolonged, perhaps impossible. And, to be sure, I would be considered eccentric at best for setting you to it. Men might wonder if I was near my dotage. That would be bad for trade, oh, yes.

"Therefore this retreat. At such times as I deem right, when your services are not required elsewhere, Bonnur, I will send word. You will leave the house and enter this section by its back door, on the lane behind. And I will give you a signal, Aliyat. You will betake yourself directly here. In fact, sometimes you will come here to be alone. You have desired to help me; very well, you may look over such

reports and figures as I shall lend you, undisturbed, and offer me your opinions. This will be common knowledge. At other times, unbeknownst to anyone else, you will meet Bonnur."

"But sir!" Red and white went in waves over the boyish face. "The lady and I and nobody else?

Surely a maidservant, a eunuch, or—or—"

Zabdas shook his head. "The protestation does you honor," he replied. "However, a watcher would defeat my whole purpose, which is to give you a true feel of conditions in Tadmor while avoiding derision and insinuations." He looked from one to the other of them. "I never doubt I can trust my kinsman and my first wife." With a flick of a smile: "She is, after all, aged beyond the usual span of Me."

"What?" Bonnur exclaimed. "Master, you jest! The veil, the gown, they cannot hide—"

"It is true," said Zabdas, a low sibilation. "You shall hear of it from her, along with things less curious."

A DAY approached sunset. "Well," said Aliyat, "best we stop. I have duties still before me."

"And I. And I should think upon what you have revealed to me this time." Bonnur's voice dragged.

Neither of them rose from the stools on which they sat facing. Abruptly he colored, dropped his gaze, and blurted, "My lady has a wonderful intelligence."

It felt like a caress. "No, no," she protested. "In a long life, even a stupid person learns a few things."

She saw him break down a barrier so that he could meet her eyes. "Hard to believe you are, are old."

"I carry my years well." How often had she said it precisely thus? How mechanical it had become.

"All you have seen—" Reckless impulse: "The change of faith. That you were forced away from Christ!"

"I have no regrets."

"Do you not? If only for, for the freedom you have lost— the freedom your friends have lost, the simple freedom to look upon you—"

For an instant she was about to hush him. Nothing closed off the doorway but a bead curtain.

However, such a thing

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muffled sound somewhat, and deserted corridors and rooms stretched between it and the inhabited part, and he had spoken softly, deep in his throat, while tears glimmered on his lashes.

"Who cares to see a hag?" she fended, and knew she was teasing.

"You are not! You shouldn't have to cower behind that veil. I've noticed when you forgot to stoop and shamble."

"You have watched me closely, it seems." She fought a dizziness.

"I cannot help myself," he confessed miserably.

"You are too curious." As if a different creature used her tongue, her hands: "Best we quench that. Behold."

She drew the yashmak aside. He gasped.

She dropped it back and stood up. "Are you satisfied? Keep silence, or we shall have to end these meetings. My lord would mislike that." She left him.

Her daughter met her in the harem. "Mama, where have you been? Gutne won't let me play with the lion doll."

Aliyat groped after patience. She ought to love this child. But Thirya was whimpery, and sick half the time, and resembled her father.

SOMETIMES THE sameness of the days broke, when Zabdas gave Aliyat materials to study and report on. In the room that was apart, she tried to grasp what she read, but it slipped and wriggled about like a handful of worms. Twice she met there with Bonnur. The second time she took off her veil at the outset, and she had dressed in a gown of light material. "The weather is blazing hot,"

she told him, "and I am only an old granny, no, great-grandmother." They accomplished little.

Silences kept falling between them.

More days flowed sluggishly together. She lost count of them. What difference did their number make? Each was just like the last, save for bickerings and nuisances and, at night, dreams. Did Satan brew certain of those for her? If so, she owed him thanks.

Then Zabdas summoned her to his office. "Your counsel has gone worthless," he said peevishly.

"Does your dotage come upon you at last?"

She bit back rage. "I am sorry, my lord, if no thoughts have occurred to me of late. I will try to do better."

"What's the use? No use in you any more. Furja, now, Furja warms my bed, and surely soon she'll be fruitful." Zabdas waved a hand in dismissal. "Well, be off. Go wait for Bonnur. I'll send him.

Perhaps at least you can persuade him to mend those woolgathering ways he's taken on. By all the saints—by the beard of the Prophet, I regret my promises to both of you!"

Aliyat stalked through the empty part of the house with fists clenched. In the room of meetings she prowled back and forth, back and forth. It was a cage. She halted at the window and stared out through the grille. From there she could look over the walls around the ancient temple of Bel. Its limestone seemed bleached under a furious sun. The bronze capitals of the portico columns blazed.

Heat-shimmer made the reliefs on the cella waver. Long had it stood unused, empty, like herself.

Now it was being refurbished. She had heard at fourth or fifth hand that the Arabs planned to make a fortress of it.

But were those Powers entirely dead? Bel of the storm, Jarhibol of the sun, Aglibol of the moon—Ashtoreth of be-gettings and births, terrible in beauty, she who descended into hell to win back her lover—unseen, they strode across the earth; unheard, they shouted throughout heaven; the sea that Aliyat had never known thundered behind her breasts.

A footstep, a click of beads, she whirled about. Bonnur halted. Sweat sheened on him. She caught the smell of it, filling the heat and silence, man-smell. She was wet with her own; the dress clung to her.

She unfastened her veil and cast it to the floor.

"My lady," he choked, "oh, my lady."

She advanced. Her hips swung as if of themselves. Breath loudened. "What would you with me, Bonnur?"

His gazelle eyes fled right and left, trapped. He backed off a step. He raised his hands against her. "No," he begged.

"No, what?" she laughed. She stopped before him and he must needs meet her look. "We've things to do, you and I."

If he is wise, he will agree. He will sit down and begin asking about the best way to bargain with a caravaneer.

84 Poul Anderson I will not let him be wise.

"I HAVE business in Tripolis," Zabdas said. "It may keep me several weeks. I shall go with Nebozabad, who leaves a few days hence."

Aliyat was glad she had left her veil on after reaching his office. "Does my lord wish to say what business it is?"

"No sense in that. You've grown barren of advice, as of everything else. I am informing you privately so that I can state what should be obvious, that in my absence you are to abide in the harem and occupy yourself with a wife's ordinary duties."

"Of course, my lord."

She and Bonnur had thus far had two afternoons together.

THIRYA STIRRED. "Mama—"

Aliya pushed fury down. "Hush, darling," she breathed. "Go to sleep." And she must wait while the child tossed and whined, until finally the bed was quiet.

Finally!

Her feet remembered the way through the dark. She clutched her nightgown to her lest it brush against something. The thought flitted: Like this do the unrestful dead steal from their graves.

But it was to life that she was going. Already the juices of it ran hot. Her nostrils drank the ced-ary odor of her desire.

Nobody else woke, and there was no guard on as small, as drab a harem as this. Her fingers touched walls, guiding her, until she reached the last dear corridor. No, do not run, make no needless sound. The beads in the doorway snaked around her. The window framed stars. A breeze from the cooling desert drifted through it. Her pulse racketed. She pulled off the gown and tossed it aside.

He came. Her toes gripped the carpet.

"Aliyat, Atiyat." The rough whisper echoed in her head. Bonnur stumbled, knocked a stool over, panted. She gurgled laughter and slipped to him.

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"I knew you would come, beloved," she sang. His arms enclosed her. She clawed herself tight to him. Her tongue thrust between his lips.

He bore her down, they were on the carpet, the thought flashed that she must take care it show no stains, he groaned and she reached after him.

Lantern light glared. "Behold!" Zabdas cackled.

Bonnur rolled off Aliyat. Both sat up, crouched back, crawled to their feet. The lantern swung in Zabdas' hand. It sent huge misshapen shadows adance over the walls. She saw him in fragments, eyeballs, nose, wet snags of teeth, wrinkles, hatred. Right and left of him were his two sons.

They bore swords. The steel gleamed.

"Boys, seize them!" Zabdas shouted.

Bonnur reeled. He lifted his hands like a beggar. "No, master, my lord, no."

It tumbled through Aliyat: Zabdas had planned this from the first. He had no passage arranged with the caravan. ; These three waited in another room, their light muffled, for that which he knew would happen. Now he would be rid of her, and keep her property, and believe that even an ifrit—

or whatever inhuman thing she might be—would not return from the punishment for adultery.

Once she would have welcomed an ending. But the weariness of the years was burned out of her.

"Bonnur, fight!" she screamed. "They'll tie us in a sack and the people will stone us to death!"

She laid her hands on his back and shoved him forward. "Are you a man? Save us!"

He howled and leaped. A man swung sword. Unprac-ticed, he missed. Bonnur caught that arm with one hand. His fist crunched into the nose behind. The second brother edged around, awkwardly, afraid of hitting the wrong body. The struggle lurched past Aliyat. It left a smear of blood on her. She bounced clear.

Zabdas blocked the doorway. She snatched the lantern from the old man's feeble grasp and dashed it to the floor. Oil flared in yellow flame. He staggered aside. She heard him shriek as the fire licked his ankle.

She fled past the beads, down hall and stairway, out the rear door, from the lane into ghost-gray streets between blank walls. The Philippian Gate stayed open after dark 86

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when a caravan was making ready. If she took care, if she moved slowly and kept to the shadows, its sentries might not see her.

Oh, Bonnur! But she had no breath or tears to spare for him, not yet, not if she wanted to live.

THOSE IN the caravan who glanced behind them saw the towers of Tadmor catch the first sun-gleam.

Then they were up the valley and out on the steppe. Ahead of them the sky also brightened-until the last stars faded away.

Signs of man were sparse on that day's travel. After Nebozabad left the Roman road on a short cut across the desert, there was nothing but a trail worn by the generations before him who had fared likewise. He called halt for the night at a muddy, pool where the horses could drink. Men contented themselves with what they carried along in skins, camels with what scrawny shrubs were to be found.

The master strode through the bustle and hubbub to a certain driver. "I will take that bale, now, Hatim," he said. The other grinned. Like most in this trade, he considered smuggling to be a part of it, and never asked unnecessary questions.

The bale was actually a long bundle tied together with rope, which had been nestled into the load on the camel. Nebozabad's slave carried it back, into the master's tent, laid it down, salaamed, and went to squat outside, forbidding intruders. Nebozabad knelt, undid the knots, unrolled the cloth.

Aliyat crept forth. Sweat plastered her hair and the djellabah he had lent to the curves of her.

The countenance was hollow-eyed, the lips cracked. Yet once he had given her water and a bite of food, she recovered with eerie quickness, well-nigh minute by minute as he watched.

"Speak low," he warned. "How have you fared?"

"It was hot and dry and gut-wrenching bumpy," she answered in a voice husky more than hoarse, "but I shall forever thank you. Did a search party come?"

He nodded. "Soon after we left. A few Arabian soldiers, rousted out—after Zabdas gained himself ill will by waking

the qadi, I gather. They were sleepy and uninterested. We need not have hidden you so well."

She sighed where she sat, knees drawn up, ran fingers through her matted tresses, gave him a smile that shone and lingered in the lamplit dusk. "You cared, dear friend."

Cross-legged before her, he scowled. "Reckless was I. It might cost me my head, and I've my family to think of."

She reached to stroke fingers across his wrist. "Rather would I die than bring harm on you. Give me a waterskin and a little bread, and I will strike off across the desert."

"No, no!" he exclaimed. "That would be a slower death. Unless the nomads found you, which would be worse. No, I can take you along. We'll swaddle you well in garments too large, keep you offside and unspeaking. Til say you're a boy, kin to me, who's requested a ride to Tripolis." He grinned sourly. "Those who doubt the 'kin* part of that will snicker behind my back. Well, let them. My tent is yours to share while the journey lasts."

"God will reward you, where I cannot. Barikai in Paradise will intercede for your soul."

Nebozabad shrugged. "I wonder how much good that will do, when it's the escape of a confessed adulteress I'm aiding."

Her mouth trembled. A tear ran down the sweat and grime dried on her cheeks. "It's right, though,"

he said in haste. "You told me what cruelties drove you from your wits."

She caught his nearer hand hi both hers and clung.

He cleared his throat. "Yet you must understand, Aliyat, I can do no more than this. In Tripolis I must leave you, with what few coins I can spare, and thereafter you are alone. Should I be charged with having helped you, I will deny all."

"And I will deny I saw you. But fear not. I'll vanish from sight."

"Whither? How shall you live, forsaken?"

"I will. I have already seen ninety years. Look. Have they left any mark on me?"

He stared. "They have not," he mumbled. "You are strange, strange."

"Nonetheless—simply a woman. Nebozabad, I, I can do somewhat to repay a morsel of your kindness.

The only

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things I have to offer are memories, but those you can bring home with you."

He sat motionless.

She drew closer. "It is my wish," she whispered. "They will be my memories too."

AND GLADSOME they are, she thought when afterward he lay sleeping. I could almost envy his wife.

Until he grew old, and she did. Unless first a sickness took one or the other off. Aliyat had never in her life been ill. Her flesh had forgotten the abuse of the day and the night that were past. A pleasant languor pervaded it, but if perchance he should awaken, she would instantly arouse to eagerness.

She smiled in the dark. Allow the man his rest. She would like to go out and walk about a while, under the moon and the high desert stars. No, too risky. Wait. Wait. She had learned how.

Paul twinged. Poor Bonnur. Poor Thirya. But if ever she let herself weep for any of the short-lived, there would be no end of weeping. Poor Tadmor. But a new city lay ahead, and beyond it all the world and time.

A woman who was ageless had one way, if none eke, to live onward hi freedom.

No Man Shuns His Doom

IT is told in the saga of Olaf Tryggvason how Nornagest came to him when he was at Nidharos and abode some while in the king's hall; for many and wonderful were the tales that Gest bore. Evening after lengthening evening as the year drew toward winter, men sat by the fires and hear-.kened.

Tales they heard from lifetimes agone and the far ends of the world. Often he gave them staves as well, for he was a skald, and was apt to strum a harp underneath the words, in English wise. There were those who muttered he must be a liar, asking how any man could have fared so widely or been so old. But King Olaf bade these be still, and himself listened keenly.

"I was living on a farm in the Uplands," Gest had said to him. "Now my last child yonder has died, and again I am weary of my dwelling—wearier than ever, lord. Word of you reached me, and I have come to see whether it is true."

"What you have heard that is good, is true," answered the priest Conor. "By God's grace, he is bringing a new day to Norway."

"But your day first broke very long ago, Gest, did it not?" murmured Olaf. "We have heard of you again and again. Everyone has—though none but your neighbors in the mountains have seen you for many years, and I supposed you must be dead." When he looked at the newcomer he saw a man tall and lean, straight in the back, gray of hair and beard but with few lines across the strong bones of his face. "You are not really aged after all."

Gest sighed. "I am older than I seem, lord."

"Guest of the Noras. A strange and heathenish nick-

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name, that," said the king slowly. "How did you come by it?"

"You may not want to hear." And Gest turned the talk elsewhere.

Right well did he understand the craft of doing so. Over and over, Olaf urged him to take baptism and be saved. Yet the king did not make threats or order death, as he did with most who were stubborn about this. Gest's tales were so gripping that he wanted to keep the wanderer here.

Conor pressed harder, seeking Gest out almost daily. The priest was eager in the holy work. He had come with Olaf when the latter sailed from Dublin to Norway, overthrew Hdkon Jarl, and won the land for himself. Now the king was calling in missionaries from England and Germany as well as Ireland, and maybe Conor felt a bit left out.

Gest gave him grave heed and soft answers. "I am no stranger to your Christ," Gest said. "I have met him often, or at least his worshippers. Nor am I plighted to Odin and Thor." His smile was rueful. "I have known too many different gods."

"But this is the true and only God," Conor replied. "Hang not back, or you will be lost. In just a few years a full thousand will have passed since his birth among men. Belike he will come back then, end the world, and raise the dead for judgment."

Gest stared afar. "It would be good to believe I can meet my dead anew," he whispered; and he let Conor talk on.

At eventide, however, after meat, when the trestle tables had been taken from the hall and women carried the drinking horns forth, he had other things to talk about, yarns to spin, verses to chant, questions to meet. Once a couple of guardsmen happened to speak of the great battle at Bravellir. "My forebear Grani from Bryndal was among the Icelanders who fought for King Sigurdh Ring," one boasted. "He cut his way close enough to see King Harald War-Tooth fall. Starkadh himself had not strength to save the Danes that day."

Gest stirred. "Forgive me," he said. "There were no Icelanders at Bravellir. Norsemen hadjiot yet found that island."

The warrior bristled. "Have you never heard the lay that THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

Starkadh made?" he flung back. "It names all the worthies who came to the fray on either side."

Gest shook his head. "I have heard, and I do not call you a liar, Eyvind. You passed on what you were told. But Starkadh never made any such lay. Another skald did, lifetimes afterward, and put it in his mouth. Bravellir was bloodied—" He sat a few heartbeats thinking, while the fires in the trenches guttered and crackled. "Was it three hundred years ago? I have lost track."

"Do you mean Starkadh was not there, and you were?" gibed the guardsman.

"Oh, he was," said Gest, "though he was not much like the stories men tell of him now, nor lamed and half blind with age when at last he went to his death."

Stillness fell anew. King Olaf peered through shifting shadows at the speaker before he asked low,

"Did you, then, know him?"

Gest nodded. "I did. Indeed, it was right after Bravellir that we met."

His STAFF was a spear, for no man traveled unarmed in the North; but over the small pack on his back hung a harp in its case, and he offered harm to none. When at nightfall he found a homestead, he slept there, repaying hospitality with songs and tales and news from outside. Otherwise he rolled up in his cloak, and by dawnlight drank from a spring or brook and ate of whatever bread and cheese his latest host had given him. Thus had he fared through most of his years, from end to end of the world.

This day was cool beneath a wan sky where clouds were scant and the sun swung southward. The woods that decked the hills of Gautland stood hazed and hushed. Birches had begun to turn yellow, and the green of oak and beech was less bright than erstwhile. Firs lifted darkling among them. Ripe currants glowed hi the shade. Smells of earth and damp filled every breath.

Gest saw rt all, widely, from a ridge he had climbed. Below him the land rolled off to an unclear edge of sight. Mostly it was tree-clad, but meadows and plowed fields 92

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broke it here and there. He spied two houses and their outbuildings, distance-dwindled; smoke rose straight upward from the roofs. Close by, a stream glistened on its way to a lake that shone in the offing,

He had come far enough from the battlefield that the wreckage and the dead strewn across it were blurred together in his eyes. Carrion birds swarmed aloft and about and back down, a whirling blackness, but also gone tiny for him. He could barely hear their cries. Sometimes the howl of a wolf lifted, to hang above the hills for what seemed a long while before dying away in echoes.

Living men had withdrawn, bound home. They took wounded kindred and friends along, but could merely throw a little earth over such of the fallen as they knew. A band of them whom Gest had come upon this morning did tell him that King Sigurdh had borne off the body of his foe King Harald, to give it a barrow and grave goods at Uppsala for the sake of his own honor.

Gest leaned on his spear, shook his head, and smiled sadly. How often had he beheld the like of this, after young men stormed forth to cast their lives from them? He did not know. He had lost the number somewhere in the waste of the centuries. Or else he had never had the heart to try keeping count. He was not sure which, any more. Yet as always, he felt the need to say a farewell, the only thing he or anyone else could now give the young men.

It was no skaldic drapa that came to his lips. The words were Northern, so that the dead would understand if they could hear, but he lacked all wish to praise bravery and recall mighty deeds.

The verse form that he chose was from a country thousands of miles toward the sunrise. There a short, slanty-eyed folk knew much and fashioned things of wondrous beauty, though there too the sword ranged free.

"The summer fading, Chill shall slash the leaves bloody And the geese trek—where? Already this ground went red While the wind called souls away."

A brief spell more Gest lingered, then turned and departed. Those Danes he met earlier had seen the one whom

THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

he sought leave soon after hah* a dozen Swedes did and follow them eastward. Thereupon Gest had gone to Bravellir and cast about until his woodsman's eye lighted on what he thought must be the tracks. He had better hurry. Nonetheless he kept to his everyday stride. It looked lazy, but in the course of a day it left as much behind it as a horse might, or more; and it let him stay aware of everything around him.

He was on a game trail. The kings had set Bravellir as their meeting place because it was a broad meadow through which a road ran north and south, about halfway between Harald in Scania and Sigurdh in Sweden. However, the land round about was thinly settled. The six going this way must be headed for the Baltic shore, where lay the ship or ships that had brought them. That they were so few bespoke how terrible the battle had been. It would be remembered, sung about, made even larger in the minds of men, for hundreds of years to come. And those who plowed yonder fields would molder forgotten.

Gest's shoes scuffed softly on soil. Branches were a roof overhead, through which sunbeams fell to make spatters of light on the shadowy hallway before him. A squirrel ran like a flame up a tree.

Somewhere a dove moaned. Brush rustled on the left, a great dim shape slipped off, an elk. Gest let his soul drift into the sweet-smelling reaches. Meanwhile, though, he kept reading the traces.

That was easy, footprints, broken twigs, torn spiderwebs, marks on mossy logs where men had sat down to rest. They were no hunters by trade, as he had been through much of his life. Nor was the one who followed them, never stopping, closing the gap between. Those feet were huge.

Time passed. The sunbeams lowered, lengthened, took on a golden hue. A bit of cold crept into the air.

Suddenly Gest halted. He leaned forward, head cocked, listening. Family to him came a noise he thought he knew.

He quickened his pace to a lope. Muffled at first by leaves, the sound swelled fast, clang and clatter, shouts, soon crackling, snapping, and harsh breath. Gest brought his spear to the ready and glided on as quietly as might be.

A slain man sprawled across the trail. He had fallen into a bush that snagged the upper half of him. Blood dripped from its stems and pooled below, screamingly bright. A blow had cloven him from the left shoulder through the

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breastbone. Pieces of rib and lung poked out of him. Fair hair clung sweat-matted to cheeks whereon no beard grew, just the down of a boy. He stared and gaped emptily.

Gest drew aside and found himself treading on another body, dose by, brush churned with combat. He glimpsed men, iron, blood and more blood. Weapon banged on weapon, scraped across helmets, thudded against wooden shields. Another fighter toppled. A thigh spouted red; he threshed about and shrieked. It was the kind of noise a human throat ought not to make. A fourth warrior dropped and lay sodden in a patch of nettles. The head was nearly off him.

Gest got behind a young fir. It screened him, and he could see between its limbs. Two were left of the band that the newcomer had overtaken and attacked. Like their mates, they wore only sarks, coats, breeks. If any owned mail, he had not thought to put it on until too late. Both these did have kettle hats. One carried sword and shield, one an ax.

Their lone foe was fully outfitted, in knee-length byrnie, conical helmet with noseguard, an iron-rimmed shield hi his left grip and a sword of uncommon size in his right. He was more than big, overtopping Gest's goodly height by a head, shoulders as wide as a doorframe, arms and legs like oak boughs. An unkempt black beard reached to his chest.

The pair had recovered from the shock of his onslaught. They worked together, barking words to and fro. The swordsman went straight at the giant. Blades clashed, agleam when they rose into a sunbeam, a blur as they hissed downward or sideways. The Swede caught a blow on his shield that made him lurch, but stood fast and struck back. The axman circled behind their enemy.

The huge man must have known it. Blindingly fast, he spun on his heel and plunged at the axman, offside, so that the stroke missed him by inches. His blade whipped. The axman staggered, dropped his weapon, stared at a right forearm laid open and bone-shattered. The giant leaped on past him.

There was a grassy patch between him and the other swordsman. At its end he turned and burst into a run at that fellow. Shields boomed together, with weight and speed behind his. Overborne, the Swede went on his back. Somehow he kept hold of his sword and got his shield up.

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The giant sprang high and landed on him. Shield was driven against ribs. Gest thought he heard them crack. Breath whoofed out. The giant straddled the writhing body and made his kill in two strokes.

He glared around. The wounded axman was in flight, blundering off among the boles. The winner dashed after and cut him down.

The shrieks of the thigh-slashed man ebbed off to cawing, to rattling, to silence.

Laughter boomed from a cavern of a breast. The huge man rammed his blade thrice into the earth, wiped it clean on the shirt of a fallen, and sheathed it. His breathing eased. He doffed helmet and coif, dropped them, swept a hairy hand over the sweat that tunneled off his brow.

Gest came out from behind the fir. The giant snatched at his hilt. Gest leaned spear in the crotch of a tree and spread his palms, "I am peaceful," he said.

The warrior stayed taut. "But are you alone?" he asked. His voice was like heavy surf on a strand of stones.

Gest looked into the rugged face, the small ice-blue eyes, and nodded. "I am. Besides, after what I have just seen, I would not think Starkadh need be wary of anyone or anything."

The warrior grinned. "Ah, you know me. But we have not met erenow."

"Everybody in the North has heard of Starkadh the Strong. And ... I have been in search of you."

"You have?" Surprise turned into a glower. "Then it was a nithing's trick to stand aside and give me no help."

"You had no need," said Gest in his mildest tone. "Also, the battle went so fast. Never have I seen such weapon-wielding."

Pleased, Starkadh spoke friendlier. "Who are you that seek me?"

"I have borne many names. In the North it has oftenest been Gest."

"What would you of me?"

"That is a long tale. May I first ask why you hounded these men down and slew them?"

Starkadh's gaze went elsewhere, toward the sun whose light shot in yellow beams between trees turning dark

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against heaven. His lips moved. After a bit he nodded, met (jest's look again, and said:

"Here shall wolves not hunger. Haraldfed the ravens. Honor won we. Only Odin overcame us. Ale I lack, but offer All these foes to Harold. Never was he niggard. Now I've shown I'm thankful."

So it was true what they said, Gest thought. As well as being the foremost of warriors, Starkadh had some gift as a skald. What else might he be?

"I see," Gest acknowledged slowly. "You fought for Ha-rald, and wished to avenge your lord after he fell, though the war be done with."

Starkadh nodded. "I hope I have gladdened his ghost. Still more do I hope I have gladdened his forebear King Frodhi, who was the best of lords and never stinted me of gold or weapons or other fine things."

A tingle went through Gest, a chill along his backbone. "Was that Frodhi Fridhleifsson in Denmark?

They say Starkadh was of his household. But he died lifetimes ago."

"I am older than I seem," answered Starkadh with renewed roughness. He shook himself. "After this day's work, thirst is afire hi me. Would you know where there is water?"

"I know how to find water, if you will come with me," Gest told him. "But what of these dead men?"

Starkadh shrugged. "I'm no scaldcrow to pick them clean. Leave them for the ants." Flies buzzed around blind eyes, parched tongues, clotting blood. Stenches hung heavy.

Gest had grown used to such sights, but he was ever happy to lay them behind him, and tried not dwell on thoughts of widows, children, mothers. The lives he had shared were short at best, the merest blink of years, and afterward, for most, a span hardly longer before they were wholly forgotten by all but him. He took his spear and led the way down the traU.

"Will you be returning to Denmark?" he asked.

"I think not," rumbled Starkadh at his back. "Sigurdh will make sure the next king in Hleidhra is beholden to him, and that the under-kings are at odds with each other."

"Chances for a fighting man."

"But I'd mislike watching the realm fall asunder that Frodhi built and Harald War-Tooth rebuilt."

Gest sighed. "From what I have heard, the seed of something great died at Bravellir. What will you do?"

"Take ships that I own, gather crews for them, and go in viking—eastward to Wendland and Gardhariki, I think. Is that a harp you bear above your pack?"

Gest nodded. "I've put my hand to sundry kinds of work, but mainly I am a skald."

"Then come with me. When we reach a lord's hall, make a drapa about what I wrought this day. I'll reward you well."

"We must talk about that."

Silence fell between them. After a while Gest saw the signs he had been awaiting and took a side trail. It opened on a glade starred with clover. A spring bubbled up at the middle; water trickled off through the grass, to lose itself under the trees. They made a wall around, dark beneath, still golden-green on top where the last sunbeams touched them. The eastern sky was violet-blue. A flight of rooks winged homeward.

Starkadh cast himself belly down and drank with mighty slurps. When at length he raised his dripping beard, he saw Gest busy. The wanderer had lain down his cloak, opened his pack, spread things out. Now he gathered deadwood below the trees and bushes that surrounded the glade. "What are you doing?" Starkadh asked.

"Making ready for night," Gest told him.

"Does nobody dwell nearby? A swineherd's hut would do."

"I know not, and belike darkness would overrun us while we searched. Besides, here is better rest than on a dirt floor breathing smoke and farts."

"Oh, I've slept under the stars often enough, and gone hungry too. I see you've a little food with you. Will you share?"

Gest gave the warrior a close look. "You'd not simply take it from me?"

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"No, no, you are neither foeman nor quite a stranger." Starkadh laughed. "Nor a woman. Too bad."

Gest smiled. "We'll halve what there is, though it's not much for a man your size. I'll set snares. By morning, with luck, we'll have voles to cook, or even a squirrel or hedgehog." He paused. "Would you like to help me? If you'll work as I show you, we can make ourselves snug before nightfall."

Starkadh rose. "Do you think me a coalbiter? Of course I'll take a hand. Are you a Finn, or have you dwelt among Finns, to know these woodsrunner's tricks?"

"No, I was born in Denmark like you—a long time ago. But I learned the hunter's craft in my boyhood."

Gest found, unsurprised, that he must pick his words with care when giving orders. Starkadh's haughtiness was likely to flare. Once he roared, "Am I a thrall?" and half drew blade. He resheathed it, smacked fist into palm, and did as he was bidden. For that moment, pain had twisted his face.

Daylight drained from the west. More and more stars glittered forth. When dusk had seeped upward to fill the glade, the men had their camp ready. A brushwood shelter, bracken and boughs heaped within, would allow rest free of dew, night mists, and rain if any fell. Turfs piled outside its mouth cast back into it the warmth of a fire that Gest had kindled with a drill. Besides nuts and berries, he had found pine cones, sedges, and roots to eke out the bread and cheese. After he had roaste"d them in the ways that were needful, he and Starkadh would bed down fairly full.

He hunkered at the fire, with his knife whittling a green stick into part of a cooking tool. It was a fire more low than the warrior would have built, softly sputtering, its slight smoke savory of resin. Though air cooled fast at this season, Starkadh learned he could stay comfortable by sitting close. The red and yellow flames cast wavery light over Gest's cheekbones and nose; it glinted from his eyes and made shadows in the gray beard. "These are good skills you own,"

Starkadh said. "Indeed you shall fare with me."

"We will talk of that," Gest answered, watching his work.

"Why? You told me you were in search of me."

"Yes, I was." Gest drew breath. "Long and long had I been away, until at last memories of the North overwhelmed me and I must come back to see if the aspens still quivered in the light nights of midsummer." He did not speak of a woman who died after he and she fared thirty years together over the vast plains of the East with her herder tribesfolk. "I had lost hope in my quest, I had stopped seeking—until as I walked through the woods and over the heaths of Jutland and the old tongue reawakened in me, not too much changed since I left, I began to hear about Starkadh. Him I must meet! I followed word of him to Hleidhra, where they said he had gone across the Sound to join King Harald and thence onward to war. I followed that trail to Bravellir, and reached it at sunset when the day's slaughter had ended. In the morning I found men who had seen him go from it, and I took the way they pointed, and here we are, Starkadh."

The huge man shifted about. "What would you of me?" he growled uneasily.

"First I would ask for the tale of your life. Some of the stories I heard were wild."

"You're a news-greedy one."

"I have sought knowledge throughout the world. M-m-m . . . how shall a storyteller repay a night's lodging or a skald 'make staves for chieftains, unless he have something word-worthy behind his teeth?"

Starkadh had unbuckled his sword, but dropped hand to knife. "Is this the beginning of witchcraft?

Uncanny are you, Gest."

The wanderer locked gaze with the warrior and answered, "I swear to cast no spell. What I am after is more strange than that."

Starkadh quelled a shiver. As if charging at fear to tram-:ple it underfoot, he said in a rush:

"What I have done is well known, though belike no man save me knows all of it. But sooth it is, wild and sometimes ugly tales have mushroomed over the years. I am not of Jotun birth. That's old wives' chatter. My father was a yeoman in the north of Zea-land, my mother came of honest fisher folk, and they had ^Olher children who—grew up, lived like anybody else, grew fold, and were laid in howe, those that battle or sickness or the sea had spared—also like anybody else."

"How long have they lain in the earth?" Gest asked softly. ':. Starkadh ignored the question. "I was big and strong, as

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you see. From childhood I lacked wish to muck and plow the fields or haul nets full of stinking fish. Twelve years old, I went off in viking. Some neighborhood men had a ship in common. They met with other ships and harried a while along the^Norse shores. When they went back for hay harvest, I stayed behind. I sought out a skipper who was going to stay the winter; and thereafter my fame waxed fast.

"Shall I tell you of battles, reavings, burnings, feasts, hunger, cold, shipmates, women, offerings to the gods, strife against storm and bad luck when the gods grew angry with us, kings we served and kings we overthrew? The years lie jumbled and awash in me like flotsam on a skerry.

"Frodhi, king at Hleidhra, took me in after I suffered shipwreck. He made me the head of his household troops, and I made him the greatest of lords in his day. But his son Ingjald proved a weakling, sluggard, glutton. I upbraided him and quit the land in disgust. Yet from time to time I have been back and wielded blade for worthier men of the Skjoldung house. Harald was the best of them, he became first among kings through all of Denmark and Gautland and well into Sweden; but now Harald is fallen, and his work broken, and I am alone again."

He cleared his throat and spat. That may have been his way of not weeping.

"They told me Harald was aged," Gest said. "He must ride to Bravellir in a wagon, and was well-nigh blind."

"He died like a man!"

Gest nodded and spoke no further, but busied himself with the food. They ate wordlessly. Afterward they slaked their thirst anew at the spring and went aside, left and right, to piss. When Starkadh came back to the fire he found Gest already there, squatting on his haunches. The night was wholly upon them. Thor's Wain gleamed enormous, barely over treetops, the North Star higher like a spearpoint.

Starkadh loomed above the fire, legs astraddle, fists on hips, and nearly snarled, 'Too long have you slyly fended me off, you. What do you want? Out with it, or I'll hew you down."

Gest looked up. The light slipped to and fro alcng the shadows in his face. "A last question," he said. "Then you shall know. When were you born, Starkadh?"

The giant coughed forth a curse. "You ask and ask and ask, and naught do you give! What kind of being are you? You sit on your hams like a Finnish warlock."

Gest shook his head. "I learned this much farther east," he replied mildly, "and many things else, but none of them are wizardry."

"You learned womanishness, you who took care to arrive late at the battlefield and stood by while I fought six men!"

Gest rose, straightened his back, stared across the flames, and said in a voice like steel sliding from sheath: "That was no war of mine, nor would I have hunted men who boded me no further harm."

In the dim and restless light, under the stars and Winter Road, suddenly he seemed of a tallness with the warrior, or in some way taller still. "A thing I heard said about you is that though you be foremost in battle, you are doomed to do ill deeds, nithing's work, over and over and over.

They say Thor laid this on you because he hates you. They say the god who bears you good will is Odin, father of witchcraft. Could this be true?"

The giant gasped. It was as if he shrank back. He raised hands and thrust at air. "Empty talk," he groaned. "Naught more."

Gest's words tramped against him. "But you have done treacheries. How many, in those lifetimes that have been yours?"

"Hold your jaw!" Starkadh bellowed. "What know you of being ageless? Be still, ere I smite you like the dayfly you are!"

"That might not be so easy," Gest purred. "I too have lived a long rime. Far longer than you, my friend."

The breath rattled in Starkadh's throat. He could merely gape.

Gest's tone went dry. "Well, nobody in these parts would keep count of years, as they do in the South or the East. What I heard was that you have lived three men's lifetimes. That must mean simply that folk remember their grandfathers telling of you. A hundred years is a good enough guess."

"I—have thought—it was more."

Again Gest's eyes caught Starkadh's and held them. His voice softened but bleakened, trembled the least bit, like a night breeze. "I know not myself how old I am. But when I was a boy, they did not yet ken metal in these lands. Of

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stone did we make our knives, our axheads and spearheads and arrowheads, our burial chambers. It was not Jotuns who raised those dolmens that brood over the land. It was us, your own forebears, laying our dead to rest and offering to our gods. Though 'we' are no more. I have outlived them, I alone, as I have outlived all the generations of men after— until today, Starkadh."

"You have grayed," said the warrior in a kind of sob, as if that could be a denial.

"I went gray in my young manhood. Some do, you know. Otherwise I have not changed. I have never been sick, and wounds heal swiftly, without scars. When my teeth wear out, new ones grow. Is it the same for you?"

Starkadh gulped and nodded.

"Belike you've taken more hurts than me, such a life as you've led," said Gest thoughtfully.

"Myself, I've been as peaceful as men let me be, and as careful as a roamer may. When the charioteers rolled into what these days we call Denmark—" He scowled. "That is forgotten, their wars and their deeds and their very speech. Wisdom lasts. It is what I have sought across the world."

Starkadh shuddered. "Gest," he mumbled. "I remember now, in my own youth there went tales of a wayfarer who— Nomagest. Are you he? I thought be was but a story."

"Often have I left the North for hundreds of years. Always it called me home again. My last stay here ended maybe fourscore years ago. Less of an absence than formerly, but—M Once more Gest sighed. "I feel myself grow ever wearier of roving the earth among the winds. So folk remembered me for a while, did they?"

Starkadh shook his head dazedly. "And to think that I, I was alive then. But I must have been faring about. ... Is it true that the Norns told your mother you would die when a candle burned down, and she snuffed it out and you carry it still?"

Gest grinned. "Do you yourself believe you have your lifespan from Odin?"

He turned grave: "I know not what has made us twain what we are. That is a riddle as dark as the death of all other mankind. Norns or gods in truth? The hunger to know drove me to the far ends of the world, that and the hope of finding more tike myself. Oh, seeing a beloved wife wither THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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into the grave, and seeing our children follow her— But nowhere did I come on any else whom time spares, nor did I come on any answer. Rather, I heard too many answers, I met too many gods.

Abroad they call on Christ, but if you fare southward long enough it is Muhammad; and eastward it is Gautama Buddha, save where they say the world is a dream of Brahm, or offer to a host of gods and ghosts and elves like ours hi these Northlands, And almost every man I asked told me that His folk know the truth while the rest are benighted. Could I but hear a word I felt even half sure of—"

"Fret not yourself about that," said Starkadh, boldness rising anew in him. "Things are whatever they are, and no man shuns his doom. His freedom is to leave a high name behind him."

"I wondered if I was altogether alone, and my death-lessness a curse laid on me for some horrible guilt I have forgotten," Gest went on. "That seemed wrong, though. Strange births do happen.

Oftenest they are weak or crippled, but now and then something springs up that can flourish, like a clover with four leaves. Could we ageless be such? We would be very few. Most could well die of war or mischance before discovering they are different. Others could well be slain by neighbors who come to fear they are witches. Or they may flee, take new names, learn how to hide what they are. I have mostly done this, seldom abiding at length in any single place. Once in a while I have met folk who were willing to take me for what I am—wise men in the East, or raw backwoods dwellers like my Northerners—but in the end there was always too much sorrow, too heavy a freight of memories, and I must leave them also.

"Never did I find my own sort. Many and many a trail did I follow, sometimes for years, but each led to naught. At last hope faded out of me, and I turned my footsteps homeward. At least the Northern springtime is forever young.

"And then I heard about you."

Gest came around the fire. He reached to lay hands on Starkadh's shoulders. "Here my quest ends, where it began," he said. Tears trembled on his lashes. "Now we are two, no more alone. And by this we know there must be more, women among them. Together, helping and hearten-104

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ing each other, we can search till we begin to find. Starkadh, my brother!"

The warrior stood unmoving before he said, "This . . . comes . . . suddenly."

Gest let go. "It does that. I've had the whole while to think since the first word I got about you. Well, take your time. We have more time than most men, you and I."

Starkadh stared off into the dark. "I thought someday I must grow old and strengthless like Harald," he breathed. "Unless first I fell in battle, and I thought I would see to it that I did .

. . But you tell me I shall always be young. Always."

"A load that on me has often felt well-nigh unbearable," Gest told him. "Shared, though, it will be light."

Starkadh clenched oak-burl fists. "What shall we do with it?"

"Ward the gift well. It may, after all, be from Beyond, and those who bear it singled out for deeds that will change the world."

"Yes." Glee began to throb in Starkadh's voice. "Fame undying, and I alive to enjoy it. War-hosts to rally round me, kingdoms to take, royal houses to found."

"Hold, hold," said Gest. "We're not gods, you know. We can be slain, drowned, burned, starved like any other men. I've stayed on earth these uncounted years by ganging warily."

Starkadh gave him a cold look. Scorn snorted: "I understand that. Do you understand honor?"

"I don't mean we should skulk. Let us make sure of our safety, both in strength and in boltholes, lest luck go awry. After that we can make known what we are, piece by piece, to such folk as we can trust. Then- awe of us will help, but that is not enough; to lead, we must serve, we must give."

"How can we give unless we have gold, treasures, a hoard such as deathless vikings can heap up?"

Gest frowned. "We draw near to quarreling. Best we speak no further tonight, but sleep on it.

Tomorrow, refreshed, we'll think more clearly."

"You can sleep—after this?"

"What, are you not worn out?"

Starkadh laughed. "After reaping a goodly harvest." He failed to see how Gest winced. "As you wish. To bed."

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However, in the shelter he thrashed and muttered and flung his arms around. Finally Gest slipped back outside.

He found a dry spot close to the spring, but decided he would take his rest in meditation rather than sleep. Having assumed the lotus position, he raised calm within himself. That came easily. He had far surpassed his gurus in lands east of the sunrises over Denmark: for he had had centuries to practice the disciplines of mind and body that they taught. Yet without those teachings, he doubted he could have endured his lot. How fared those masters, those fellow chetas? Had Nadha or Lobsang at last won free of the Wheel?

Would he ever? Hope bound him. He could never quite bring himself to loosen it. Did that mean he spurned the faith? "Om mani padme hum." No such words had seized him by the soul; but was that because he would not let them? Could he only find a God to Whom he could yield —

At least he had become like the sages in control of the body and its passions. Rather, in this he had won to the power for which they had striven. Breath and heartbeat dwindled at his command until he was unaware of them. Chill ceased to be a thing invading his skin; he was of it, he was the night world, he became the stave that unfolded.

"Slowly the moon Slides aloft. Keen is its edge, Cutting the dark. Stars and frost, As still as the dead, Warn of another Waning year. "

A noise recalled him. Hours had passed. The east stood gray above the trees. Dew spread the only brightness hi a hueless half-light. Mists smoked above it and along men's breath. The clear gurgle of the spring sounded much louder than it was.

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rimmed gaze jumped about until it landed on Gest. He grunted and stalked that way.

Gest rose. "Good morning," he greeted.

"Did you spend the night sitting?" Starkadh wondered. His voice grated. "Sleep fled me too."

"I hope you got some rest anyway. I'll go see what's in the snares."

"Wait. Ere I take more at your hands—"

Cold pierced Gest from within. "What's wrong?"

"You. Your slippery tongue. I tossed as in a nightmare, righting to grasp what you meant yesterday. Now you'll make it plain to me."

"Why, I thought I did. We are two ageless men. Our loneliness is at an end. But there must be others, women among them, for us to find and . . . and hold dear. For this, we'll swear oaths, become brothers—"

"Of what kind?" rasped Starkadh. "I the chieftain, later the king; you my skald and redesman— But that's not what you said!" He swallowed. "Or do you also want to be a king?" Brightening: "Surely!

We can divide the world between us."

"We would die trying."

"Our fame will never die."

"Or worse, we would fall out with each other. How shall two stay together when always they deal in death and betrayal?"

At once Gest saw his mistake. He had intended to say that such was the nature of power. Seizing it and holding it were alike filthy. But before he could go on, Starkadh clapped hand to hilt. The rocky face went dawn-pale. "So you besmirch my honor," he said from the bottom of his gullet.

Gest lifted a hand, palm outward. "No. Let me explain."

Starkadh leaned close. His nostrils flared. "What have you heard about me? Spew it out!"

Gest knew starkly that he must. "They tell how you took one small king captive and hanged him for an offering to Odin, after you had promised him his life. They tell how you murdered another in his bath house, for pay. But—"

"I had to!" Starkadh yelled. "Ever was I an outsider. The rest were, were too young, and—" He uttered a bawl like an aurochs bull's.

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"And your loneliness lashed you till you struck back, blindly," Gest said. "I understand. I did when first I heard about you. How often have I felt thus? I remember deeds of mine that hurt me worse than fire. It's merely that I am not a killer."

Starkadh spat on the ground. "Right. You've hugged your years to you like a crone wrapping herself in her blanket."

"But don't you see," Gest cried, "things have changed for us both? Now we've better work to do than attack folk who never harmed us. It was the lust for fame, wealth, power that brought you to dishonor."

Starkadh screamed. His sword flew free. He hewed.

Gest shifted like a shadow. Nonetheless the edge ripped down his left arm. Blood poured forth, drenched the cloth, dripped into the streamlet that ran from the spring.

He drifted back, drew his knife, halted hi half a crouch. Starkadh stood fast. "I should . . .

chop you in twain . . . for what you said," he panted. Gulping air: "But I think you will die soon enough of that stroke." Laughter clanked. "A shame. I did hope you'd be a friend. The first real friend of my life. Well, the Norns will it otherwise."

Our natures do, Gest thought. And: How easily I could kill you. How open you stand to a hundred martial tricks I know.

"Instead, I shall have to go on as erstwhile," said Starkadh, "alone."

Let it be so, thought Gest.

With the fingers of his right hand he searched below his torn shirt and pushed together the lips of his wound. Pain he made into something apart from himself, like the mists that broke under the strengthening light. He gave his mind to the blood flow.

Starkadh kicked the shelter aside, fetched his mail, drew it over the underpadding in which he had spent the night. He donned coif and helmet, belted on sword, picked up shield. When he was ready to leave, he stared in astonishment at the other man. "What, are you still on your feet?" he said.

"Shall I make an end of you?"

Had he tried that, it would have been the end of him. But he stopped, shivered, turned away. "No,"

he mumbled. "This is all too spooky. I'm off to my own doom, Nor-nagest."

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He lumbered up the trail, into the woods and beyond sight.

Then Gest could sit down and bring a whole heed to the steering of his body. He had stopped the bleeding before he suffered overmuch loss, though he would be weak for a few days. No matter. He could stay here until he was fit to travel; the earth would provide for him. He began to hasten the knitting of the flesh.

He dared not wish he were able to heal the wound inside.

"HOWEVER, WE only met fleetingly, Starkadh and I," Gest went on. "Afterward hearsay about him reached me now and then, until I went abroad again; and when I came back he was long dead, slain as he had wanted."

"Why have you fared so widely?" asked King Olaf. "What have you sought?"

"What I never found," Gest answered. "Peace."

No, that was not wholly right, he thought. Over and over had he been at peace, in the nearness of beauty or wisdom, the arms of a woman, the laughter of children. But how short the whiles! His latest time as a husbandman, in the Uplands of Norway, seemed already the dream of a single night: Ingridh's youthful gladness, its rebirths in the cradle he had carved, her heart that stayed high while she grew more gray than he, but then the shriveling years, and afterward the burials, the burials. Where now wandered Ingridh? He could not follow, not her nor any of those who glimmered on the rim of memory, not that first and sweetest of all, garlanded with ivy and in her hand a blade of flint. . . .

"In God is peace," said the priest.

It could be, it could be. Today church bells rang in Norway, as they had done for a lifetime or more in Denmark, yes, above that halidom of the Mother where he and the garland girl had offered flowers ... He bad seen the charioteers and their storm gods come into the land, he had seen bronze and iron, the wagon trains bound south for Rome and the viking ships bound west for England, sickness and famine, drought and war, and life patiently beginning anew; each year went down into death and awaited the homecoming of the sun that would bring it to rebirth; be too THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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could let go if he would, and drift away on the wind with the leaves.

King Olaf's priest thought that soon every quest would end and the dead arise. How good if that was true. Ever more folk believed so. Why should not he?

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Days later, Gest said, "Yes, I will take your baptism." The priest wept for joy. Olaf whooped.

But when it was done, that evening in the hall Gest took forth a candle and lighted it at a torch.

He lay down on a bench where he could see it. "Now I may die," he told them.

Now I have yielded.

He let the candleflame fill his vision, his being. He made himself one with it. The light waxed for him until he almost thought it shone on those lost faces, brought them back out of the dark, nearer and nearer. His heartbeat heeded him, slowing toward quietness.

Olaf and the young warriors stood dumb with awe. The priest knelt in shadow and prayed without uttering the words aloud.

The candleflame flickered to naught. Nornagest lay still. Through the hall sounded a wind of the oncoming winter.

Encounter

FROM AFAR the gold shone like a daylight evenstar. Sometimes trees hid it, a woodlot or a remnant of forest, but always as the travelers moved west they saw it again, brilliant in a vastness of sky where a few clouds wandered, above a plain where villages and freshly greening croplands lay tiny beneath the wind.

Hours wore on, sunbeams now tangled themselves in Svoboda Volodarovna's brows, and the hills ahead loomed clear, the city upon the highest of them. Behind its walls and watchtowers lifted domes, spires, the smoke from a thousand hearths; and over all soared the brightness. Presently she heard chimes, not the single voice of a countryside chapel but several, which must be great ones to sound across this distance, ringing together in music such as surely sang among the angels or in the abode of Yarilo,

Gleb Ilyev pointed. "The bell tower, the gilt cupola, belongs to the cathedral of Sviataya Sophia," he said. "That's not any saint's name but means 'Holy Wisdom.' It comes from the Greeks, who brought the word of Christ to the Rusi." A short, somewhat tubby man with a pug nose and a scraggly beard turning gray, he was given to self-importance. Yet leathery skin bespoke many years of faring, often through danger, and goodly garb told of success won by it.

"Then all this is new?" asked Svoboda in amazement.

"Well, that church and certain other things," Gleb replied. "Grand Prince Yaroslav Vladimirovitch has built them since these lands fell to him and he moved his seat here from Novgorod. But of course Kiyiv was already great. It was founded in Rurik's time—two centuries ago, I believe."

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And to me this was only a dream, Svoboda thought. It would have been less real than the old gods that we suppose stiD haunt the wilderness, did not merchants like Gleb pass through our little settlement once in a while, bringing their goods that few of us can afford but also their tales that everyone is eager to hear.

She clucked to her horse and nudged it with her heels. These lowlands near the river were still wet after the spring floods, and the mire of the road had wearied the horse. Behind her and her guide trailed his company, hah0 a dozen hirelings and two apprentices leading the pack animals or driving a pair of laden wagons. Here, safe from bandits or Pecheneg raiders, they had laid weapons aside and wore merely tunics, trousers, tall hats. Gleb had put on good clothes this morning, to make a proper show when he arrived; a fur-trimmed cloak was draped over a brocaded coat.

Svoboda was well-clad too, in a gown of gray wool bordered with embroideries. Hiked up across the saddle, her skirts revealed finely stitched boots. A headcloth covered flaxen braids. Weather had only tinged her with bronze, work had built strength without stooping the back or coarsening the hands. Well-figured enough that the big bones did hot stand forth, she looked at the world out of blue eyes set widely hi a face of blunt nose, full mouth, square chin. Lineage and fortune showed; her father had been headman of the village in his day, and each of her husbands had been better off than most men—blacksmith, hunter-trapper, horse breeder and dealer. Nonetheless she must keep herself reined in if she would appear calm, and the heart in her breast kept breaking free of that grip.

When she came in clear sight of the Dniepr, she could not help catching her breath. Brown and mighty rolled the river: easily five hundred paces across, she guessed. To her right a low, grassy island divided it. Lesser streams flowed in from either side. The far shore was surprisingly much forested, though houses and other buildings led up from the water to the city and clustered around its ramparts, while orchards or small farmsteads and pastures nestled elsewhere in the hills.

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was her. Few women accompanied any traders, and those who did were seldom of an honorable kind.

A ferry waited. Its owner hastened to meet Gleb and chaffer with him, then went about calling for crew to man the sweeps. Three trips would be necessary. The gangway was steeply pitched, for the wharf was built high against the yearly rise. Gleb and Svoboda were among the first to cross. They took stance near the bows, the better to watch. Voices barked, wood creaked, water lapped and splashed, the vessel started off. The breeze was cool, wet, full of silty smells. Fowl winged about, ducks, geese, lesser birds, once a flight of swans overhead, but not so many as at home; here they were hunted more.

"We come at a busy time," Gleb warned. "The city is crammed with strangers. Brawls are common, and worse than that can befall, despite everything the Grand Prince does to keep order. I shall have to leave you alone while I attend to my work. Be very careful, Svoboda Vol-odarovna."

She nodded impatiently, barely hearing words he had spoken over and over, her gaze and her heed aimed forward. As they approached the west bank, the ships gathered there seemed to breed until they were past counting. She caught hold of her senses and told herself that now the outer hulls, riding at anchor, did not hide those at the docks from her, and the number must be scores rather than hundreds. It took away none of the wonder. Here were no barges such as she was on, nor rowboats and dugout punts such as her own folk used. These were long and lean, clinker-built, gaudily painted, many with stemposts carved into fantastic figureheads. Oars, yards, and unstepped masts lay on trestles above the benches. How their sails must spread like wings when they came to the sea!

"Yes, the famous merchant fleet," said Gleb. "Most likely all are now gathered. Tomorrow, perhaps, they leave for Constantinople, New Rome."

Again Svoboda scarcely listened. She was trying to imagine that sea the ships would find at the river's end. It reached farther than a man could look; it was rough and dark and salt of taste; huge snakes and people who were half fish beset its waves. So the tales went. She strove to form the vision, but failed. As for the city of the Basileus, THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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how could the claim be true that it made Kiyiv, Kiyiv, look small and poor?

To go and find out, to be there!

She sighed once, then shoved longing aside. Quite enough newness lay straight ahead. What she might gain and what she might suffer were alike unforeseeable. Even in fireside stories, no woman had ever ventured this that she was venturing. But none had ever been driven by a need like hers.

Memories flitted through her, secret thoughts that had come when she was alone, working in house or garden, gathering berries or firewood in the outskirts of the forest, lying wakeful in the night. Could she also be special, a princess stolen from the crib, a girl chosen for destiny by the old gods or the Christian saints? No doubt every child nursed daydreams of that sort. They faded away as one grew up. But in her they had slowly rekindled—

No prince came riding, no fox or firebird uttered human words, life simply went on year by year by year until at last she broke free; and that was her own, altogether ordinary doing. And here she was.

Her heart quickened afresh. It hammered fear out of her. Wonders in truth!

The ferry knocked against bollards. Its crew made fast. The passengers debarked into racket and bustle. Gleb pushed through the crowd of workers, hawkers, sailors, soldiers, idlers. Svoboda stayed close at his side. She had always taken care to uphold self-command in his presence, bargain rather than appeal, be friendly rather than forlorn; but today he knew what he did while she was bewildered. This was nothing like a fair at the town she knew, which was little more than a fort for villagers to take refuge in.

She could watch, though, hearken, learn. He talked to a man of the harbormaster's and a man of the Prince's, he left orders with a man of his about where to bring the rest of his band, and finally he led her up the hill into the city.

Its walls were massive, earthen, whitewashed. An arched gateway, flanked by turrets and crowned with a tower, stood open. Guards in helmet and chain mail leaned on their pikes, no hindrance to the traffic that thrust to and fro, on foot, on horseback, donkey cart, ox-drawn wagon, sometimes sheep or cattle herded toward slaughter, once a monstrous beast, like a thing out of nightmare, that Gleb called

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a camel. Beyond, streets twisted steep. Most of the vividly painted buildings that lined them were timber, below roofs of mossy shingle or blossoming turf. Often they stood two, even three stories high. In the windows of those that were brick, there gleamed glass. Above them she glimpsed the golden cupola where the bells dwelt, surmounted by a cross.

Noise, smells, surge and push of bodies overwhelmed Svoboda. Gleb must raise his voice when he pointed out some new kind of person. The priests she knew at once, black-gowned and long-bearded, but a man more coarsely clad was a monk, sent into town from his nearby cave on an errand, while a magnificently robed elder borne in a litter was a bishop. Townsfolk—housewives who dickered on a market square overflowing with goods and people, portly merchants, common workers, slaves, children, peasants from the hinterland—wore an endlessness of different garbs, and nowhere the dear decorations of home. Tarry sailors, tall blond Northmen, Poles and Wends and Livo-nians and Finns in their various raiments, high-cheeked tribesmen off the steppes, a pair of Byzantines clothed with elegance and disdain, she was lost among them, and at the same time she was upraised, carried along, drunk on marvel.

At a house near the south wall, Gleb halted. "This is where you will stay," he said. She nodded.

He had told her about it. A master weaver, whose daughters had married, earned extra money by taking in trustworthy lodgers.

A maidservant answered Gleb's knock. The goodwife appeared. Gleb's followers brought in Svoboda's baggage, and he paid the woman. They went to the room that would be hers. Cramped, it held a narrow bed, stool, pot, basin, water jug. Above the bed hung a picture, a man with a halo, letters around him to spell out a name that the wife said was St. Yuri. "He slew a dragon and saved a maiden," she explained. "A fine guardian for you, my dear. You have come to be married, I believe?" The sharp, hasty accent forced Svoboda to listen closely.

"So we trust," Gleb replied. "Arranging the betrothal will take days, you understand, Olga Borisovna, and then there will be the wedding preparations. Now this lady is tired after a long, hard journey."

"Of course, Gleb Ilyev. What else? Hungry too, I'm sure.

I will go see that the soup is hot. Come to the kitchen when you are ready, both of you."

"I must be straightway off, myself," he said. "You know how a trader has to watch and pounce at this season, like a sparrowhawk, if he would strike any bargains worth half his trouble."

The woman bustled off. So did his men, at a gesture from him. For a moment he and Svoboda were alone.

Light was dim; this room had only a small window covered by membrane. Svoboda searched Gleb's face as best she could, where he stood in the doorway. "Will you meet Igor Olegev today?" she asked low.

"I doubt that," he sighed. "He is an important man, after all, his voice strong in the folkmoot, and—and very busy while the fleet is here, not just as a chandler but—well, when you deal with men of many nations, it becomes politics and schemes and—" He was not wont to speak thus awkwardly.

"I'll leave word, and hope he can receive me tomorrow. Then we'll set a time for you to meet with him, and—and I'll pray for a good outcome."

"You said that was sure."

"No, I said I think it likely. He is interested. And I know him and his situation well. But how could I make you any outright promise?"

She sighed in. her turn. "True. At worst, you said, you can find somebody less well off."

He stared down at the rushes on the floor. "That . . . need not happen either. We are friends of old, you and I. Right? I could—look after you—better than, than you have thus far let me do."

"You have been more than kind to me," she said gently. "Your wife is a lucky woman."

"I had better go," he mumbled. "Get my whole party together, everyone quartered, wares stored, and then— Tomorrow, whenever I can, I'll stop here and give you the news. Until then, God be with you, Svoboda Volodarovna." He turned and hurried off.

She stood a while, her thoughts atumble, before she found her way to the kitchen. Olga gave her a bowl of rich beef broth, crowded with leeks and carrots, black bread and ample butter on the side.

She settled herself on the bench

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across the table and chattered away. "Gleb Ilyev has told me so much about you—"

With a wariness that the years had taught her, Svoboda steered the talk. Just how much had the man said? It was a relief to learn he had been as shrewd as usual. He had described a widow with no dependent children alive and no prospect of remarriage hi her distant, rude neighborhood. Out of charity, and in hope of earning credit in Heaven, Gleb had suggested her to the chandler Igor Olegev of Kiyiv, himself lately left bereaved among several youngsters. The prospect appeared good; a woodlander could learn city ways if she was clever, and this woman had other desirable qualities as well. Therefore Gleb helped Svoboda convert her inheritance to cash, a dowry, and took her along on his next trip.

"Ah, poor darling, poor little one." Olga dabbed at tears. "No child of yours above the earth, and no man to wed one so young and beautiful? I cannot understand that."

Svoboda shrugged. "There was ill feeling. Please, spare me talking about it."

"Yes, village feuds. People can indeed get nasty, hemmed in by themselves all their lives. And then, pagan fears prey on them. Do they imagine you're unlucky, cursed by a witch perhaps, just because you've had many sorrows? May God now, at last, prosper your life."

So Gleb had told truth, while holding back truth. A trader skill. For an instant, Svoboda wondered about him. They got along well together, she and he. They could do more than that, if this marriage scheme fell through. Let the priests call it sin. Kupala the Joyous would not, and maybe the old gods did linger on earth . . . But no. Gleb was already gray. Too little time remained for him that she could bring herself to hurt the wife whom she had never met. She knew how loss felt.

Having eaten, and Olga gone back to a housewife's work, Svoboda sought her room. She unpacked, stowed her possessions, and wondered what to do next. There had always been some task, if only to spin thread. But she had left the things of home behind, with home itself. Nor could she just sink into blessed idleness, savoring it, or into sleep, as countryfolk were apt to when the rare, brief chance came. That

was not the way of a headman's daughter, wife to a man of weight.

Restlessness churned in her. She paced the floor, flung herself onto the bed, bounced up again, yawned, glowered, paced anew. Should she go help Olga's household? No, she wouldn't know her way about. Moreover, Igor Olegev might well think it demeaned his bride. If anything was to come of that. What was he like? Gleb called him a good fellow, but Gleb would never see him from a woman's side, not even well enough that what he said of Igor's looks called forth anything real for Svoboda.

St. Yuri, there on the wall, she could at least take the measure of, gaunt, big-eyed— She knelt before him and tried to ask his blessing. The words stuck in her throat. She had been dutiful but not devout, and today proper meekness was beyond her.

She paced. Decision came slowly. Why must she stay penned between these walls? Gleb had told her to be careful, but she had often gone alone into the woods, fearless of wolf or bear, and taken no harm. Once she caught a runaway horse by the bridle and dragged him to a stop, once she killed a mad dog with an ax, once she and her neighbors crowded into the stockaded town and stood off a Pecheneg raid. Besides, while the hours dribbled away here, life pulsed out there, newness, wonder. The bell tower shone tall. . .

Of course! The church of the Holy Wisdom. There, if any place, she could feel prayerful; there God would hear and help.

Yes, surely.

She threw a cloak on, pinned it fast, drew up the hood, glided forth. Nobody could forbid her to leave, but it would be best if she went unnoticed. She did pass a servant, maybe a slave, but he gave her a dull glance and continued scrubbing out a tile stove in the main room. The door closed behind Svoboda. The street swept her off.

For a while she wandered, shyly at first, then in a daze of delight. Nobody .offered her any rudeness. Several young men did stare, and a couple of them grinned and nudged each other, but that just made her tingle. Now and then somebody jostled her by chance. It was less often than ear-118

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tier, the ways were less thronged, as the sun sank westward. Finally she got a clear sight of the cathedral and steered by it.

When she saw St. Sophia full on, she caught her breath. Sixty paces long it was, she guessed dizzily, rising white and pale green in walls and bays, arched doorways and high glass windows, up and up to, yes, ten domes in all, six bearing crosses and four spangled with stars. For a long time she could only stand and look. At last, mustering courage, she went on past workmen who were adding to the splendor. Her heart thudded. Was this forbidden? But besides priests, commoners went in and out. She passed the entrance.

After that, for a time during which time was not, she drifted like a rusalka beneath the water.

Almost she wondered if she too had drowned and become such a spirit. Twilight and hush enfolded her, windows glowed with colors and images, walls with gold and images . . . but no, that stern strange face overhead was Christ, Lord of the World, in the ring of his apostles, and yonder giantess made of little stones was his Mother, and . . . the song, the deep moaning tones that finally lifted from behind a carven screen, while bells rang high above, those were in praise of his Father. . . . She prostrated herself on cold flags.

Awareness seeped into her much later. The church had become a cavern of night; she was alone, except for a few clergy and many candles. Where had the day gone? She crossed herself and hastened out.

The sun was down, the sky still blue but swiftly darkening, the streets full of dusk between walls in whose windows flametight fluttered yellow. They were well-nigh deserted. Her breath, footfalls on cobbles, rustle of skirts sounded loud in the quiet. Turn right at this corner, left at the next— no, wait, that was wrong, she had never seen yonder house with'the rafter ends carved into heads— She was lost.

She stopped, filled her lungs and eased them again, grinned wryly. "Fool," she whispered. "At your age you should have known better." She glanced about. Roofs stood black against a heaven gone almost as dark, where three stars trembled. Opposite, paleness crept upward, the moon rising. So, west and east. Her lodging stood near the south wall. If she kept on that way, as closely as these crooked lanes allowed, she should reach it. Then she could knock on a door and ask directions. No doubt Olga would make a fuss and tomorrow Gleb would chide her.

She stiffened her back. She was headman Volodar's daughter. Picking her steps carefully, gown held above ankles, to avoid the worst muck, she set off.

Twilight thickened toward night. Air lay chilly. The moon gave wan light when she saw it, but mostly it was still behind roofs.

Lampglow, smoke, smells of kvass and cookery, spilled from a half-open door. Voices barked, laughter bayed. She scowled and went by on the far side of the street. An inn, where men were getting drunk. She had seen that sort of thing when she visited the town with a husband. Rostislav had grown too fond of it, he'd reel back to her, all stench and sweat—

Boots thudded behind her, louder, nearer.

She quickened her steps. The other did too, and drew alongside. "Ha," he growled, "greeting to you." She could barely understand him.

They entered a patch of moonlight and he became more than a shadow. A head taller than she, he blocked the gathering western stars out of her sight. She saw a pate shaven except for a lock on the right side, a bristle of mustache under a nose that had once been broken, tattoos over the shaggy breast and down the thick arms. He wore a shirt half unlaced, broad trews, short cloak, everything stiff with old grease. The knife at his belt was nearly of sword size, a weapon forbidden to everyone but the Prince's guards within this city.

A demon! flashed ice-sharp through her, and then: No, a Varyag. I've heard about them, Northmen and Rusi who ply the rivers, walking stormwinds— She pulled her look from him and sought to go on.

A hand clamped on her right arm. "Now, now, not be hasty," he laughed. "You out for fun this late, no? I give you fun."

"Let me be!" she cried, and tugged at the grip. He wrenched. Pain stabbed sickeningly through her shoulder. She stumbled. He held her fast.

"Come," he said, "there's an alley, you tike it." The smell of him caught at her gorge. She must gag before she could scream.

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"Quiet, you! Nobody come." His free hand cuffed. Her head rocked. Darkness roared through.

Nonetheless, somehow, she dug her heels down and screamed again.

"Quiet or I— Ha-a-a." He cast her to the cobbles. When she could see upward, he had turned to meet two others.

They must have been on a side street and heard, she thought amidst the dizziness. Let them help me. Christ, Dazhbog, Yarilo, St. Yuri, help them help me.

The Varyag's knife was out. "Go," he snarled. "No need you. Go." She realized that he was drunk, and that that made him the more dangerous.

The smaller of the two men advanced, cat-footed. "I think best you go cool that noggin of yours, friend," he replied mildly. His own knife slipped forth. It was a tool for eating and ordinary cutting, a sliver against that great blade. Nor did its bearer seem any kind of warrior. His slender frame bore a fur-lined coat and trousers smoothly tucked into soft boots. Svoboda made out that much because his companion carried a lantern, which threw a dull glow on them both and a puddle of it at their feet.

The Varyag grinned beneath the moon. "Dainty lordling and cripple," he jeered. "You tell me what to do? Scoot, or I find how white your tripes be."

The second new man put down the lantern. It had been in his left hand. His right was missing. From a leather cup strapped to that forearm reached an iron hook. Otherwise he was muscular, his garb stout but plain. He drew his small knife. "We two," he rumbled. "You alone. Cadoc say go, you go."

Unlike the slim man, he could barely speak Russian.

"Two cockroaches!" the Varyag yelled. "Perun thunder me, enough!"

He made a long step forward. His weapon flashed. The slim man—Cadoc?—swayed aside. He thrust out an ankle and gave a push. The Varyag tripped, crashed to the stones. The man with the hook laughed. The Varyag roared, sprang up, charged him.

The hook slashed. Its curve ended in a point that went deep into the attacker's upper arm. The Varyag yelled. The opponent's knife cut his wrist. His own iron clattered loose. Cadoc danced in and, half playfully, seized his hairlock and sliced it across. "The next trophy comes from between your

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legs," Cadoc said with a leer. The Varyag howled, whirled, fled. Echoes died away.

Cadoc hunkered down by Svoboda. "Are you well, my lady?" he asked. "Here, lean on me." He helped her rise.

His companion stooped for the Varyag's knife. "No, leave that," Cadoc ordered. His Russian must be for her benefit. "I wouldn't want the guard to find it on us. That oaf's carcass would scarcely be as inconvenient. Let's get away. The racket may well have drawn attention we can do without. Come, my lady."

"I, I'm unhurt." The breath sobbed in Svoboda's throat. She had, in fact, suffered nothing but possible bruises. A measure of daze remained. She went blindly along, Cadoc's hand on her elbow.

The man with the lantern and the hook asked something that must mean, "Where to?"

"Our lodging, of course," Cadoc snapped in Russian. "If we should meet a patrol, then nothing has happened, we've simply been out for a little drink and merriment. Will you agree to that, my lady?

You do owe us something, and we'd hate to miss the fleet's departure tomorrow because Yaroslav's officers wanted to question us."

"I must get home," she pleaded.

"You shall. We'll see you safely back, never fear. But first—" Shouts lifted to the rear. "Hark!

Somebody did come. They've found the knife, and if they have a lantern too, they'll have seen the blood and scuffled offal. Here." Cadoc led them into an alley, a tunnel of murk. "Roundabout, but it avoids trouble. We'll lie low for an hour or two and then escort you, my lady."

They emerged on a broad street, moon-bright. Svoboda's wits had returned. She wondered how far she could trust the pair. Might it be wisest to insist she go back to Olga's at once? If they refused, she could strike out by herself, no worse off than earlier. But that had not been well off at all.

And—a throbbing, a warmth—never had she known anybody like this. Never again would she, perhaps.

They were to sail in the morning and she, she was once more to become a wife.

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and trod through, into a space where she could barely see tables, benches, a couple of night lamps burning. "The common room," said Cadoc in her ear. "This is a hostel for those who can afford it.

Quiet, please."

She peered. Rufus' lantern showed him to be lumpy-featured, freckled, the dense whiskers and thin hair a bright yellowish-red. Cadoc was altogether foreign, his face narrow and aquiline, the eyes slightly aslant tike a Finn's but large and brown, hair shoulder-length and as raven-black as the beard he kept trimmed to a point. A golden finger ring was equally alien in its workmanship, a snake that bit its tail. Seldom had she met as ready a smile as was his.

"Well, well," he murmured. "I had no idea that the lady in distress was so comely." He bowed, as if she were a princess. "Fear not, I repeat. We'll take proper care of you. Alas for your raiment." Glancing down, she saw filth smeared over it.

"I, I could tell people I fell," she stammered. "That is true."

"I think we can do better," Cadoc said.

Rufus followed them upstairs to a second-floor chamber. It was large, wainscoted, drapes by a glazed window and a rug on the floor, with four beds, a table, several stools, and whatever else comfort required. Rufus took the candle from his lantern and used it to light the tapers in a seven-branched brass holder. His deftness told Svoboda he must have lost his hand long ago, to have learned so well how to do without it.

"We are the only two," Cadoc told Svoboda. "It's worth the cost. Now—" He squatted by a chest, took a key from his pouch, opened the lock. "Most of our goods are on our ship, naturally, but here are. some especially valuable, whether from abroad or acquired in Kiyiv. They include—" He rummaged. "Ah, yes." The fabric he drew out shone in the candlelight. "I regret we can't prepare a hot bath at this hour, my lady, but yonder you'll find a basin, water jug, soap, towels, slop jar.

Make free, and afterward don this. Meanwhile, of course, Rufus and I will absent ourselves. If you'll open the door a crack and hand out your soiled things, he'll see what he can do toward cleansing them."

The redbeard made a mouth. He grumbled in an un-

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known tongue. Cadoc replied and, somehow, jollied him till he nodded. They took single candles in holders and left.

Svoboda stood alone with her bewilderment. Did she dream? Had she blundered into elvenland, or had she met a pair of gods, here in this Christian stronghold? Suddenly she laughed. Whatever befell, it was new, it was a wonder!

She unfastened brooches and laces, pulled clothing over her head, held it around the door as Cadoc had suggested. Somebody took it. She closed the door again and went to wash. The cloth caressed a nakedness that the cool air seemed to flow across. She dawdled at the task. When a knock sounded, she called, "Not yet," and hurried to dry herself. The garment, tossed onto a bed, drew a gasp from her. It was a robe of sheening, baby-smooth material, gold-trimmed blue, secured by silver buttons. Her feet were now bare. Well, peeping from beneath the skirt, they would catch glances, she thought, and flushed hot. Quickly she combed locks fallen astray around her coiled braids, and knew their amber color would show well above the dress. "Enter," she said, not quite evenly.

Cadoc appeared, a tray balanced on his left hand. He shut the door behind him and put the tray on the table. It bore a flagon and two cups. "I never knew silk could be this beautiful," he said.

"What?" asked Svoboda. She wished her pulse would slow.

"No matter. I'm often rather brash. Please sit and enjoy a stoup with me. I woke the potboy to give me of the landlord's choicest. Take your ease, recover from that foul experience."

She lowered herself to a stool. Before he did likewise, Cadoc poured out a red liquid with a summery odor. "You are very kind," she whispered. As Gleb is kind, she thought; then, unwillingly: No, Gleb is a countryside trader growing old. He can read and write, but what else does he know, what has he seen and done beyond his narrow rounds? "How can I repay you?" Immediately: That was a foolish thing to say!

However, Cadoc only smiled, raised his cup, and replied, "You can tell me your name, my lady, and whatever else

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you care to. You can gladden me with your company for a short while. That is ample. Drink, I pray you."

She sipped. Deliciousness flowed over her tongue. This was no berry wine of the backwoods, it was—was— "I, I am—" Almost, she gave him her baptismal name. But of course that would be unwise.

She believed she could trust this man, but if a sorcerer somehow learned it she would be open to spells. Besides, she seldom thought about it. "Svoboda Volodarovna," the name she used at home.

"From . . . afar. Where is your friend?"

"Rufus? Oh, I've put him to getting your clothes as clean as possible. Afterward he won't disturb us. I gave him a flagon of his own to keep him company. A loyal man, brave, but limited."

"Your servant, then?"

Did a shadow flit across his face? "An associate of mine for a long, long time. He lost his hand fighting once, warding my back, when a gang of Saxons ambushed us. He kept on fighting, left-handed, and we escaped."

What were Saxons? Robbers? "Such a wound should have disabled him, at least. Most men would soon have died of it."

"We're a tough pair. But enough. How did you happen to be abroad after dark, Svoboda Volodarovna?

You're clearly not the kind who ordinarily would. It was sheer luck that Rufus and I were in earshot. We'd been having a last cup with a Rus factor I've come to know; bade him goodnight since we must rise betimes tomorrow, set off, and then— Ah, it seems God would not let a lady such as you come to sordid grief."

The wine glowed and thrilled in her blood. She remembered caution, but did find herself blurting out as much as Gleb had revealed on her behalf to Olga Borisovna and . . . and, as her voice ran on, to Igor Olegev. Cadoc's shrewd, quiet questions made it easy.

"Ah," he murmured at length. "Thank the saints, we did save you from ruin. That besotted mercenary would have left you in no state to hide what had befallen, if he left you alive at all." He paused. "Whereas you can tell your landlady, and afterward that man who's playing father to you, that you stayed too late at the church, lost in prayer. It's nothing unusual hereabouts.", THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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She bridled. "Shall I give them a falsehood? I have my honor."

He grinned. "Oh, come now. You're not fresh out of a cloister." She didn't know what that might be, but caught his drift. "How often in your life has a He been more than harmless, been a shield against hurt? Why put the good Gleb in an awkward position, when he has worked so hard on your behalf?" Impudently: "As the go-between who brought Igor the chandler a superb new wife, Gleb can await excellent business deals. Spoil it not for him, Svoboda."

She covered her confusion by draining her cup. He refilled it. "I understand," he said. "You are young, and the young are apt to be idealistic. Nevertheless, you have imagination and boldness beyond your years, more than most men do, that you would set forth into an altogether different life. Use that wisdom."

Sudden desolation welled up in her. She had learned how to turn it into mirth of a sort. "You talk as my grandfather might have," she said. "How old are you?"

His tone bantered. "Not yet worn out."

Eagerness to know surged like lust. She leaned forward, aware of his awareness of her bosom. The wine buzzed, bees in a clover meadow. "You've told nothing of yourself. What are you?" A prince or boyar, ending his father's name not in "ev" but in "vitch"? The byblow of a forest god?

"A merchant," he said. "I've followed this route for years, building my wealth till I own a ship.

My stock is fine things: amber and furs from the North, cloths and delicacies from the South, costly without being too bulky or heavy." Maybe the drink had touched him a bit also, for he added, puzzlingly, half under his breath, "It lets me meet people of many different kinds. I am curious about them."

"Where are you from?"

"Oh, I came through Novgorod, as traders from my parts do, by river, lake, portage, to here. Ahead He the great Dniepr and its falls—hardest of the portages, that, and our military escort much needed in case of raiders off the steppe—then the sea, and at last Constantinople. Not that I make the journey every year. It's long both ways, after all. Most cargoes are transshipped here at Kiyiv. I return to Swedish and Danish ports, or ofttimes to England. How-126

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ever, as I said, I want to travel as much as I'm able. Have I answered you windily enough?"

She shook her head. "No. I meant, what is your nation?"

He spoke with more care. "Rufus and I—Cymriu, the dwellers call that country. It is part of the same island as England, is the last of the ancient Britain, best for me because nobody there would mistake me for English. Rufus doesn't matter, he's my old retainer, he's gone by the nickname so long that he's well-nigh forgotten any else. I, though—Cadoc ap Rhys."

"I've never heard of those lands."

"No," he sighed, "I didn't expect you had."

"I've a feeling you've traveled more than you just said."

"I have wandered quite widely, true."

"I envy you," burst from her. "Oh, I envy you!"

He raised his brows. *'What? It's a hard life, often dangerous, always lonely."

"But free. Your own master. If I could fare like you—" Her eyes stung. She swallowed hard and tried to lay hold on the tears before they broke loose.

Turned grave, he shook his head in his turn. "You do not know what becomes of camp followers, Svoboda Vol-odarovna. I do."

Understanding washed over her. "Y-you are a lonely man, Cadoc," she said around a thickness.

"Why?"

"Make the best of that life you have," he counselled. "Each in our own way, we are all of us trapped in ours."

"You too." Your strength must fade, your pride shall crumble, in one more blink of time you will go down into the earth and soon after that your very name will be forgotten, dust on the wind.

He winced. "Yes. Thus it seems."

"I'll remember you!" she cried.

"What?"

"I— Nothing, nothing. I am shaken and weary and, and I think a little drunk."

"Do you wish to sleep till your clothes are ready? I'll stay quiet— Svoboda, you weep." Cadoc came around the table, stooped over her, laid an arm across her shoulders.

"Forgive me, I'm being weak and, and foolish. Not myself, please believe me, not myself."

"No, certainly not, dear venturer. I know how you feel."

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His lips brushed her hair. Blindly she turned her head toward him, and knew he would kiss her. It was gentle. Her tears made it taste like the sea.

"I am an honorable man, of sorts," he said against her cheek. How warm were his breath, his body.

"I'd not force you to anything."

"You need not," she heard through the great soft thunders.

"I depart shortly after dawn, Svoboda, and your marriage awaits you."

She gripped him hard, nails into his coat. "Three husbands I have had already," she told him, "and sometimes, at the lakeside, the spring feast of Kupala— Oh, yes, Cadoc."

For an instant she saw that she had let out too much. Now she must somehow answer his questions, with her head awhirl. . . . But he gave her his hand, it was as if he lifted her to her feet, and went by her side to a bed.

Thereafter she was again in a dream. Her wanting him had come over her as a torrent. If she foresaw anything whatsoever, it was a slaking. He was not a big man, but he might be strong, he might take a while to finish, long enough, and then she could topple into sleep. Instead, he took the robe from her through a time that swayed on and on, and guided her to help him off with his garb, always his fingers and his mouth knowing what to do, what to evoke; and though the bed was narrow, when he brought her down upon it he still stroked and touched and kissed until she wailed for him to open the heavens and unloose the suns.

Afterward they caressed, laughed, japed, spread two straw ticks on the floor that they might have real room to move about, played, loved, his head rested between her breasts, she urged him anew and yet anew, he swore he had never known the match to her and the believing of him was a tall fire.

—The glass in the window grayed. Candles had burned down to stubs. The smoke of them drifted bitter through a chill that she finally began to feel.

"I must see you to your lodging," he said in her arms.

"Oh, not at once," she begged.

"The fleet leaves soon. And you have your own world to meet. First you will need rest, Svoboda, dear."

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"I am weary as if I'd plowed ten fields," she murmured. A giggle. "But you did the plowing. You rascal, I'm hardly able to walk." She nuzzled the silky beard. "Thank you, thank you."

"I'll sleep soundly pn the ship, myself. Afterward I'll wake and remember you. And long for you, Svoboda. But that is the price, I suppose."

"If only—"

"I told you, the trade I follow these days is a bad one for a woman."

"You come home from it after the season, don't you?"

He sat up. His face seemed as gray as the light. "I have no home any more. I dare not. You couldn't understand. Come, we must hurry, but we needn't ruin this that we've had."

Dumbly, she waited while he dressed and went to get her clothes from Rufus. The thought trickled through her: He's right, the thing is impossible, or at least it would be too brief and become too full of pain. He does not know, however, why he is right.

Her garments were wet after washing. They hung clammily. Well, with luck she could get to her room unnoticed. "I wish I could give you the silk robe," Cadoc said. "If you can explain it away— No?"

Maybe he would think of her when it passed to some girl somewhere else. "I also wish I could feed you. We're under time's whip, you and I. Come." Yes, she was hungry, faint with hunger and weariness and ache. That was good. It pulled her spirit back down to where she belonged.

Fog hazed and hushed the streets. The sun had belike risen, but barely, in the east that Svoboda had forsaken. She walked hand in hand with Cadoc. Among the Rusi, that simply meant friendship.

Nobody outside would know when the clasp tightened. Few people were around thus far, anyhow. From a passerby Cadoc learned the way to Olga's dwelling.

They stopped before it. "Fare gladly, Svoboda," he said.

"And you," was all she could answer.

"I will remember you—" his smile twisted— "more than is wise."

"I will forever remember you, Cadoc," she said.

He took both her hands in his, bowed above them,

straightened, let her go, turned, and walked off. Soon he was lost in the fog.

"Forever," she said into the emptiness.

A while she remained standing. The sky overhead was clear, brightening to blue. A falcon, early aloft, caught the light of the hidden sun on his wings.

Maybe it's best that this was what it was and nothing more, she thought. A moment snatched free, for me to keep beyond the reach of the years.

Three husbands have I buried, and I think that was release, to pray them goodbye and see them shoveled under, for by then they had wasted and withered and were no longer the men who proudly stood beside me at the weddings. And Rostislav had peered at me, wondered, accused, beaten me when he got drunk. . . . No, burying my children, that was the worst. Not so much the small ones, they die and die and you have no time to know them except as a brightness that goes by. Even my first grandchild, he was small. But Svetlana, now, she was a woman, a wife, it was my great-grandchild who killed her in the birthing.

At least that was the final sorrow. The villagers, yes, my living children, they could no longer endure this thing that is I, that never grows decently old. They fear me, therefore they hate me.

And I could no longer endure, either. I might have welcomed the day when they came with axes and clubs to make an end of the thing.

Gleb Ilyev, ugly, greedy little Gleb—he has the manhood to see past strangeness, see the woman who is neither child of the gods nor creature of Satan but is the most lost and bewildered of any. I wish I could reward Gleb with better than silver. Well, I wish for much that cannot be.

Through him, I have found how to stay alive. I will be the best wife to Igor Olegev that I am able. But as the years pass, I will befriend somebody else like Gleb, and when the time comes, be will find a new place, a new beginning for me. The widow of one man can many again, in some town or on some farm well distant, and nobody she knew will think it is altogether outlandish, and nobody she comes to know will think of questions she dares not answer. Of 130

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course, the children must be left provided for, such as are not grown. I will be the best mother that I am able.

A smile winged by.

Who can tell? A few husbands of mine may even be like

Cadoc.

Her dress clung and dripped. She felt how cold she was, shivered, and walked slowly to the door of the house.

VII

The Same Kind

HABIT DIES hard, and then from time to time will rise from its grave. "What do you really know about this drab, Lugo?" asked Rufus. He spoke in Latin such as had not been heard for centuries, even among churchmen of the West.

Nor had Cadoc used that name for a span longer yet. He replied in Greek: "Practice your living languages more. Get your terminology right. The word you used scarcely fits the most fashionable and expensive courtesan in Constantinople."

"A whore be a whore," said Rufus stubbornly, though he did change to the modern tongue of the Empire. "You been, uh, in-vest-igating her, talking with people, sounding 'em out, damn near since we got here. Weeks. And me left to twiddle my thumb." He glanced down at the stump of his right wrist. "When're we going to do something?"

"Perhaps quite soon," Cadoc answered. "Or perhaps not. It depends on what further I can learn about the lovely Athenais, if anything. And on much else, to be sure. I am not only overdue for a change of identity, we are both overdue for a change of occupation. The Rus trade is spinning faster and faster toward ruin."

"Yah, yah, you've said that plenty often. I've seen for myself. But what about this woman? You haven't told me nothing about her."

"That is because patience in disappointment is not among your excellences." Cadoc paced to the single window and stared out. It stood open on summer air, odors of smoke 132

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and tar and dung and hinted fragrances, noise of wheels and hoofs and feet and voices. From this third-floor inn room the view swept over roofs, streets, the city wall, the gate and harbor of the Kontoskalion. Masts raked upward from the docks. Beyond glittered the Sea of Marmora. Craft danced on its blueness, everything from bumboats shaped like basins to a freighter under sail and a naval dromond with oars in parade-ground step. It was hard to imagine, to feel, the shadow under which all this lay.

Cadoc clasped his hands behind his back. "However, I may as well inform you now," he said. "Today I have hopes that I'll reach the end of the trail, or find that it was a false scent. It's been maddeningly vague, as you'd expect. So-and-so tells me that somebody else once told him this-and-that. With difficulty, because he's moved, I track down Kyrios Somebody Else to verify it, and to the best of his dim recollection that is not quite what he told So-and-so, but from a third party he did once hear— Ah, well.

"Basically, 'Athenais' is the latest name the lady has taken. No surprise there. Name changes are quite usual in her profession; and of course she prefers to obscure her origins, the fact that she was not always the darling of the city. I've established that, earlier, she worked as Zoe in one of the better brothels over in Galata; and I am practically certain that before then she was on this side of the Golden Horn, in the Phanar quarter, as a less elegant girl calling herself Eudoxia. Beyond that, the information is slight and unreliable. Too many people have died or otherwise disappeared.

"The pattern has been the same, though, an outwardly affable but actually secretive woman who avoids pimps—at worst, formerly, she paid off as necessary—and spends no more on fanciments than she must. Instead, she saves—invests, I suspect—with an eye to moving up another rung on the ladder. Now she is independent, even powerful, what with her connections and the things she doubtless knows. And—" Despite the dull houndwork that lay behind, despite the coolness he kept m his tone, a tingle went along Cadoc's backbone, out to his scalp and fingertips. "The trail reaches at least thirty years into the past, Rufus. It may well be fifty or more years long.

Always she is youthful, always she is beautiful."

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"I knew what you was after," said the redbeard, unwont-edly low, "but I'd stopped thinking you'd ever find it."

"I too, almost. Seven centuries since I came on you, and nobody before and nobody afterward, for all my searching. Yes, hope wears thin. Maybe today, at last—" Cadoc shook himself, turned about, and laughed. "I'm soon due at her place. I dare not tell you what a few hours there cost!"

"Have a care," Rufus grunted. "A whore be a whore. I go find me a cheap 'un, ha?"

Impulsively, Cadoc reached into his pouch and gave him a fistful of silver miliarisions. "Add this to your own coins and enjoy yourself, old fellow. A shame that the Hippodrome isn't open just now, but you must know several odeions where the performances are bawdy enough for your less elevated moments. Just don't talk too loosely."

"You taught me that, you did. Have fun. I hope she turns out to be what you want, master. I'll use a bit o' the money to buy you a good-luck spell." That seemed to be about as much as the prospect could move Rufus' stolidity. But then, Cadoc thought, he lacks the wit to understand what it will mean to find another immortal—a woman. At least, immediately; it may dawn on him later.

I don't suppose I quite understand it yet myself.

Rufus went out. Cadoc took an embroidered mantle off its hanger and fitted it over the fine linen sakkos and be-jeweled dalmatic that enrobed him. On his feet were curly-toed shoes from far Cordova. Even for an afternoon appointment, one went to Athenais appropriately dressed.

He had already gotten his hair cut short and his beard shaven off. Fluent in Greek and familiar, after much prowling, with the byways of the city, he could pass for Byzantine. Not that he would try to do so unnecessarily. It wasn't worth the risk. Rus merchants were supposed to stay in the St. Manio suburb on the Galata side of the Horn, crossing the bridge to the Blachernae Gate by day and returning at evening. He was still listed among them. It had taken a substantial bribe as well as persuasive chatter to get permission to take lodging here. He was not actually a Rus, he told the officials, and he was ready to retire from the trade. Both statements were true. He had gone on, mendaciously but persuasively, about certain new arrangements he had in mind, which would be to the profit of local magnates as well

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as himself. In the course of generations, given an innate talent for it, one learns how to convince. Thus he won freedom to pursue his inquiries with maximum efficiency.

The streets throbbed and clamored with traffic. He followed their steepnesses to the Mese, the avenue that, branching, ran from end to end of the city. Down its width on his right he spied the column that upbore Justinian's equestrian statue in the Forum of Constantine and beyond it, just glimpsed, the walls of the Imperial palace grounds, senate house, law courts, Hippodrome; the domes of Hagia Sophia; the gardens and shining buildings on the Acropolis: glories raised through lifetime after transient lifetime.

He turned left. Brilliance flowed with him and glowed from the arcades that lined the thoroughfare. Plainness was nearly lost in it, workmen, porters, carters, farmers in from the countryside, priests of the lower orders. Even hawkers and strolling entertainers flaunted fantastic colors as they shouted what wonders they offered; even slaves wore the liveries of great households. A nobleman passed by in his palanquin, young dandies whooped in a wineshop, a troop of guardsmen tramped with mail agleam, a cavalry officer and his attendant cataphracts cantered haughtily behind a runner who shouted and elbowed people aside, banners flew, cloaks and scarfs billowed in a brisk wind off the sea, New Rome seemed immortally young. Religion yielding to commerce and diplomacy, foreigners were plentiful, be they suave Muslim Syrians, boorish Catholic Normans, or from lands farther and stranger yet. Cadoc was content to vanish into the human flood.

At the Forum of Theodosius he crossed over to its northern corner, ignoring the sellers who cried their wares and the beggars who cried their need. Where the Aqueduct of Valens overlooked the roof-decked hollow it spanned, he paused for a moment's breath. The view swept before him, down to rampart and battlements, the Gate of the Drun-garii, the Golden Horn full of its own farings, and across those waters hills green with growth, white with the houses of Pera and Galata. Gulls yonder made a living snowstorm. You can tell a rich harbor by its gulls* thought Cadoc. How much longer will this many fly and mew here?

He thrust sadness from him and continued north, downhill, until he found the house he wanted.

Outwardly it was

an unpretentious three-story building, hemmed in by its neighbors, the facade rosy-plastered. But that was ample for one woman, her servants, and the revelries over which she presided.

A bronze knocker was made in the form of a scallop shell. Cadoc's heart skipped a step. Had she recalled that this Western Christian emblem of a pilgrim once belonged to Ashtoreth? The fingers with which he rattled it were damp.

The door opened and he confronted a huge black man in Asian-like shirt and trousers—an entire male, likelier hireling than slave, well able to remove anyone whom his employer found objectionable. "Christ be with you, kyrie. May I ask what is your desire?"

"My names is Cadoc ap Rhys. The lady Athenais awaits me." The visitor handed over a piece of parchment bearing the identification, given him when he paid the price to her broker. That woman had had to decide first that he was suitably refined, and still she had told him no time was available for a week. Cadoc slipped the doorman a golden bezant—a little extravagant, perhaps, but impressiveness might help his chances.

It certainly got him deference. In a twittering cloud of pretty girls and two eunuchs he passed through an anteroom richly furnished, its walls ornamented with discreetly erotic scenes, up a grand staircase to the outer chamber of a suite. This was hung in red velvet above a floral Oriental carpet. Chairs flanked a table of inlaid ebony whereon stood a flagon of wine, figured glass goblets, plates of cakes, dates, oranges. Light fell dim through small windows, but candles burned in multiple holders. Sweetness wafted from a golden censer. A lark dwelt in a silver cage.

Here Athenais was.

She put aside the harp she had been strumming. "Welcome, Kyrie Cadoc from afar." Her voice was low, scarcely less musical than the strings had been—carefully trained. "Twice welcome, bearing news of marvels, like a fresh breeze."

He bowed. "My lady is too gracious to a poor wanderer."

Meanwhile, keenly as if she were an enemy, he assessed her. She sat on a couch, displaying herself against its white-and-gold back, in a gown that enhanced rather than revealed. Her jewelry was a bracelet, a pendant, and three rings, small but exquisite. It was her person, not her wealth, 136

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and her spirit more than her person, that she had the intelligence to emphasize. Her figure was superb in a voluptuous Eastern fashion, but he judged that suppleness and strength underlay it.

Her face he would simply have called handsome: broad, straight-nosed, full-lipped, eyes hazel beneath arching brows, blue-black hair piled thick around the tawny complexion. It was not looks that had brought her to this house, it was knowledge, skill, perception, the harvest of— how long an experience?

Her laugh chimed. "No poor man enters here! Come, be seated, take refreshment. Let us get to know each other."

She never rushed to the bedroom, he had heard, unless a patron insisted, and such a one was seldom allowed back. Conversation and flirtation beforehand were part of a delight that was said to have a climax unrivalled.

"Marvels have I seen," Cadoc declared, "but the finest of them today." He let a servant remove his upper garment and sat down beside her. A girl knelt to fill their glasses. At a tiny gesture from Athenais, all attendants bowed out.

She gave him a subtle flutter of lashes. "Certain men of Britannia are more polished than news of it led me to expect," she murmured. "Have you come directly from there?" He observed the sharpness of the demure glance and knew she was taking his measure. If he wanted a woman who had more in her head than a mouth, that was what she would provide.

Therefore—

His pulse stammered. The self-control of centuries underlay the calm wherewith he regarded her, took a sip of the estimable wine, and smiled. "No," he said, "I have not been in Britannia, or England and Wales as they call it nowadays, for a rather long time. But then, though I told your ancilla that is my country when she asked, I am not really a native of it. Or of anywhere else, any longer. On my last visit here I heard rumors about you. They caused me to return as soon as possible."

She half shaped a reply, aborted it, and sat cat-watchful, too wise to exclaim, "Flatterer!"

He calculated his grin. "I daresay your . . . callers . . . number some with various peculiarities. You gratify them or not according to your inclination. It must have been a cruel struggle to win this independence. Well, then, will you in-7H£ BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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dulge my whim? It is perfectly harmless. I only wish to talk for a short span. I would like to tell you a story. You may find it amusing. That is all. May I?"

She failed to quite hide her tautness. "I have heard many stories, kyrie. Do continue."

He leaned back and let the words flow easily while he looked before him, observing her from the corner of an eye. "Call it the kind of yarn that sailors spin during calm watches or in taverns ashore. It concerns a mariner, though afterward he did numerous different things. He thought himself an ordinary man of his people. So did everybody else. But bit by bit, year by year, they noticed something very odd about him. He never fell sick and he never grew old. His wife aged and finally died, his children turned gray and then white-haired, their children begot and raised children and likewise fell prey to time, but everything in this man since the third decade of his life stayed changeless. Was that not remarkable?"

He had her, he saw, and exulted. Her gaze was utterly intent.

"At first it seemed he might be blessed of the gods. Yet he showed no other special powers, nor did he do any special deeds. Though he made costly sacrifices and later, approaching despair, consulted costly magicians, to him came no revelation, nor any solace when those he loved went down into death. Meanwhile the slow growth of awe among the people had, with equal slowness, become envy, then fear, then hatred. What had he done to be thus condemned, or what had he sold to be thus spared? What was he, sorcerer, demon, walking corpse, what? He barely evaded attempts on his life. Finally the authorities moved to investigate him and he fled, for he suspected they would question him under torture and put him to death. He knew he could be wounded, although he recovered fast, and felt sure that the worst injuries would prove as fatal to him as to anybody else. Despite his loneliness, he kept a young man's desire for life and the savoring of it.

"For hundreds and hundreds of years he was a rover on the face of the earth. Often he let his yearnings overcome him and settled down somewhere, married, raised a family, lived as mortals do.

But always he must lose them, and after a single common lifetime disappear. Between whiles, which 138

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